What It’s Like to Be a Woman In Online Dating
- Meeting Men, Online Dating, Online Dating
Man goes on dating site.
Man assumes women have it easy because they get a ton of attention.
Man poses as woman on dating site to prove his point.
Man barely lasts two hours as a woman because the responses from his fellow men are so toxic.
Men scramble to approach women like rats chewing on a meaty chicken bone, and then wonder why women are so turned off by them.
Yeah, that’s about right.
Says the clueless man in question, “At first I thought it was fun, I thought it was weird but maybe I would mess with them or something and freak them out and tell them I was a guy or something, but as more and more messages came (either replies or new ones I had about 10 different guys message me within 2 hours) the nature of them continued to get more and more irritating. Guys were full-on spamming my inbox with multiple messages before I could reply to even one asking why I wasn’t responding and what was wrong. Guys would become hostile when I told them I wasn’t interested in NSA sex, or guys that had started normal and nice quickly turned the conversation into something explicitly sexual in nature. Seemingly nice dudes in quite esteemed careers asking to hook up in 24 hours and sending them naked pics of myself despite multiple times telling them that I didn’t want to.”
As a male coach for smart, strong, successful women, I apologize on behalf of all men. They’re generally not evil people. But they really don’t get what it’s like to walk a mile in your shoes. I wrote about this in Finding the One Online extensively – what it’s like to be a woman dating online and how men need to up their games to connect. Hell, I just gave a TEDx talk about this very thing. Men scramble to approach women like rats chewing on a meaty chicken bone, and then wonder why women are so turned off by them. Says the original author:
“I would be lying if I said it didn’t get to me. I thought it would be some fun thing, something where I would do it and worse case scenario say “lol I was a guy I trolled you lulz”, etc. but within a 2 hour span it got me really down and I was feeling really uncomfortable with everything. I figured I would get some weird messages here and there, but what I got was an onslaught of people who were, within minutes of saying hello, saying things that made me as a dude who spends most of his time on 4chan uneasy. I ended up deleting my profile at the end of 2 hours and kind of went about the rest of my night with a very bad taste in my mouth.”
I apologize on behalf of all men. They’re generally not evil people. But they really don’t get what it’s like to walk a mile in your shoes.
Well, duh. Welcome to Understanding the Opposite Sex 101, dude. It should be a required experience for men – just as approaching men and getting rejected dozens of times should be a required experience for women.
Ladies, have you ever had a similar experience to this woman? Guys, were you aware of how bad women have it?
starthrower68 says
I would have been interested to know, however, if any of the messages he received were from internet bots or scammers. I’m not trying to say what he experienced isn’t true, but bots and scammers are plentiful on dating sites, to the extent that any reasonably intelligent person can smell them as fakes.
RustyLH says
Speaking of scammers, be very careful of those who want to quickly send you pictures. Pictures can be used to deliver viruses and other forums of malware. So if your particular anti-virus doesn’t detect what they are using, you could be infecting your computer, and opening yourself up to giving a bank information and other stuff that you don’t want out there.
Jim Gleeson says
Pictures can carry viruses, but only in very rare cases. What you might be speaking of is people sending trojans that appear to a picture attachment, but are actually applications. There are ways you can identify a file to make sure it is what it says it is.
Tim Gordon says
Probably a fair number of them.
Keeping in mind that I don’t even waste my time, effort, or money on bona fide dating sites in recent years, the free social networking sites that I’ve dabbled on through the years are thoroughly riddled with them. In my locale, a quick browse will turn up dozens, if not scores, of blatantly bogus profiles. The real ones are fairly easy to spot in comparison as either I recognize the people in the photographs, or else I recognize the picture background as being situated in this area. The scammer profiles with more than just one photo always manage to have pictures that weren’t taken within a thousand miles of here! Apparently they’d have me believe that they take a lot of trips to exotic places…
On the other hand, one of the ways I spot real profiles is in how bad they are. The scammers at least TRY to make what they put up look presentable. The legitimate ones almost universally feature poorly taken pictures of people who would have MUCH better luck at the nearest dive bar or neighborhood drunkfest where no one present is in any shape to get behind the wheel. Those horrible pictures taken by/of the most unpresentable individuals the community has to offer are often accompanied by, well, nothing! They say nothing about themselves, and many times when they do post a few characters in an attempt to do so, not saying anything at all would have been the wiser choice.
Speaking of wisdom, it’s tough to beat the old ‘If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!”.
Blondie99 says
I think the spammers and bots are purely a thing guys get. I have never encountered that as a woman and I have done a lot of online dating. I have however been asked if I was a bot or a plant or a fake profile paid by the site.
cfluff says
Putting question put there ..what if anything is appealing and normal ? I .got a lot of agressive women who stopped when I said I did not wouldn’t “hook up” …I liked the attention but when I told them honestly tgat I was selective.. I was left w out attention
Jim Gleeson says
Yes, and that’s the other side of the coin. Women are probably given the sex and other odes online all the time. And men are being contacted by bots and scammers. And the thing is maybe eventually he will find someone online who is real…and will not believe it. So my advice is, if the guy doesn’t ask for naked pics, doesn’t have a personality disorder, and you like eachother…skype or facetime him otherwise he will have a healthy supply of skepticism.
GL says
Yes. ‘Tis the bane of online dating. However, the sleazy ones reveal themselves quickly. If anyone outright asked me a question about sex: no response. If anyone feigns genuine interest and randomly sends election shots (text): no response. It’s the ones who say: hey what’s up? Or, write something very conversational, they tend to be more gentlemanly.
Joe says
Those election shots–you know, with the candidates and all–are really off-putting!
GL says
LOL! Dang autofill
Sunflower says
Yes! This chicken bone has done been knawed on too many times and that’s why I haven’t done online dating in a long while. However, I’m coming to realize that if I want to meet someone (because it’s extremely hard working and trying to spend time with family & friends), it’s about the only option there seems to be. And let’s face it, the only thing catching my eye in the produce aisle are the avocados.
Tim Gordon says
While I always try to look at things from both perspectives and will sometimes perform a search as a woman looking for a man to see how the male profiles are trending, I’ve never attempted to troll by posing as a woman and posting such a profile to elicit responses from men. I can certainly believe accounts of what the results are or would be, but I’ll admit I have much difficulty identifying with it.
Putting my own profile up, which is 100% genuine and as well executed as any that can be found on the Internet, has taught me just how deafening silence can be!
Cat5 says
Been there, done that. It is disheartening and overwhelming at times. However, it’s no different than having people wolf whistle, and yell inappropriate things or make inappropriate gestures at you in real life (all of which I have experienced).
And it’s not as bad as having people inappropriately touch you in real life like grabbing your breast, ass, or other inappropriate places, or rubbing up against on purpose when you pass them in a crowded space (all of which I have experienced). I shudder even thinking about it. Fortunately, I have a nice right cross, and not afraid to use it if someone purposely touches me inappropriately or purposely rubs up against me.*
At least when you are on-line, emailing, or texting, you can just delete it, ignore it and/or block the person…though you do have to deal with that which has been seen, cannot be unseen.
*NB: I said purposely does these things. Sometime accidents happen when in crowded spaces and people accidently rub up against or grab things to stop themselves from falling. I am not referring to those accidental situations.
Having said that, I have continued to date.
Blondie99 says
OMG cat you are so right. I have experienced these types of things in public since high school. and men wonder why pretty women are mean or look bitchy!
Amy says
Thanks for explaining why we look mean sometimes! I agree.
Amy says
Agreed! That is why I look mean too. It works! 😉
misha says
I’d be very interested to know what his profile picture, if any were used. That might explain some of it.
waterdragon says
No, I don’t think so. I’m an overweight grandmother and even I get that crap.
Joy says
My one experience with OkCupid lasted 24 hours because of this same response. I am a 44 year old woman who put I was looking for a long-term relationship, not a hookup. At first, I thought the requests from the 21 year old boys were cute, and I could ignore them. What sent me off the deep end and made me feel dirty was the request I got from an age appropriate man who told me he was married (at least he was honest about that) and was looking to meet during the day and during the work week for sex. He gave the sob story about his wife being depressed and how she couldn’t be intimate with him. I didn’t respond, but I wanted to say to him, “Oh boy. I am getting propositioned to meet a married man during the week for sex and nothing else. Woo Hoo! Just what I wanted.” NOT…He would definitely be getting the better end of the deal. In my opinion, he should either try to work things out with his wife or get a divorce, not be trolling on internet sites looking to cheat on his wife. I felt so dirty after this request that I deleted my profile. Now, I am on match, and not to say there aren’t perverts there too, but my profile seems to filter most of them out.
Princess says
Hi Joy. I’m 41 and yes I get the married men too with their sob stories. If I respond I just say having an affair is not going to solve your “problem”. Good luck in your search. Then I block them
starthrower68 says
The unsavory characters tend to hit on “fresh meat” immediately. Once that’s done, unless you are highly desirable, and I am not, then it goes dead.
Katt says
I agree starthrower68, and it seems to be getting worse. I’m getting many more scammers and guys who are just spamming I don’t know how many women to see if they get a rise. I’ve written to many men and haven’t even got a thanks but no thanks reply. I’m quite attractive for my age (over 50) and generally like my age group, no young kids or old men and I get heaps of mail from young guys who ‘like’ older women. Eeeeew!
There must be a real gem in there somewhere …
Susan says
Joy,
I have had so many married men contact me.. and I have grown weary of it. Most of them lie about it at first and just say they want a discreet relationship. First red flag. When asked why they give the BS answer that they are private people. Now I just cut to the chase and say I know they are married. Then they give me the sob story. Then I just tell them they should be off the site and go work things out. I give them a choice. Get rid of your profile in 24 hours or I am reporting to you to the site! Since I already have their admission in writing that they are married! I used to just block and ignore but that doesn’t help anyone out. They stay on the site and move on to the next person. I also believe that the sites need to get better at screening. And when someone is reported for being married they are PERMENENTLY blocked until they can prove they are single. This also goes for scammed. If I can spot the scammed profiles a mile away why ca’t the reviewers of the profiles for the sites do this? It’s easy on the lady’s side – they always say they are widowed, have only one picture up and it looks like it came out of a catalogue – because it did.
EmeraldDust says
I received a series of aggressive e-mails while I was asleep. Starting at about 11pm and going on until the wee hours of the morning, one man sent me a string of e-mails, winks, games, etc. The first couple were just a series spaced about an hour apart. Eventually, he got beligerant and demanded to know why I wasn’t answering him. (most people are sleeping at those hours) The last e-mail was full of sexual aggression. So I woke up to this string of increasingly beligarant e-mails. I forwarded them to match.com and reported him for sexual harassment, and then blocked him. A month later I saw that he was still on the site. His e-mails were a gross violation of their policies. I think it was grounds to be kicked off. I haven’t gone back to match since then, I don’t feel very safe on there after that. Not for him writing to me in that manner, but for the fact that match allowed him to stay after that. Guess all they care about his getting paying members.
And as for that BS about being a “private” person wanting a “discreet” relationship, you are right, that IS a red flag. An old friend of mine just recently announced that she was “in a relationship” on FB, but when questioned about it, said she could not reveal his name, and that she had already put him “in danger” by even mentioning that she was in a relationship. About 3 years prior, she had another secretive quasi-relationship. I am really holding myself back to not be a “buttinski” and telling her to stop settling for these “discreet” relationships. She deserves better than to be someone’s dirty little secret.
Blondie99 says
I had the same experience on match a few times and I reported it as well and they would not remove him from the site. It is all about getting money not people’s safety.
Amy says
@Emerald, that is scary! Thank God, he was online! He sounds like he needs a life and cannot take a hint! He’s crazy.
Rose says
I am over 60 and on three online dating sites and have experienced a few contacts from inappropriately aged younger men, not aggressively so …whew! I ignore them, if you report them and are on there long enough you will see them again! I have had a few contacts that were still married and one who said he wasn’t sure of his status as his wife wasn’t dead yet but it was sure to be soon as she was ill. I bet he’ll be looking for a while.
Kitkat says
I get a few of those e-mails. To find a smidgen of joy in it – I respond and give him the “what-for.” what slugs. Just tired, tired, tired of on-line dating. Men, the kinda decent educated ones, decide that I’m not quite good enough or something like that. The slugs are just looking for hookers. Which means there are hookers on those sites – or at least women that do send icky photos after two minutes. I’m ready to chuck it all in and be single forever.
Christine says
Yes i too was also on that site and he was a good looking guy with brown hair and brown eyes…and he told me he is trying to work things out but wantsvto find someone on the side that shw wouldnt know about…he then would hide his pics at night. i also envailed a romance scammer, who would use scripts that sounded to good to be true and wanted to me very desperately to get on yahoo messenger so the site cant track his interactions. But he wouldnt use his video chat. Then he said he had to go out of town to china…eventually I kept doubting it all and typed his emails into google and they came up word for word…they are nigerian romance scammers and eventually would call your number and use your number internationally to text and call others…look into your apps on your phone u will be shocked at how much control they can gain and u never even know the apps are on your phone aame with your computer through messenger…that is their job…then they eventually get your bank info or ask u to send money…insane
Jim Gleeson says
I am not sure that scammers can take over your phone just by knowing your number. They may be able to do phishing scams on you if they do, but your actual number is more a gateway than anything else. However, if you can give out evidence to the contrary, I am willing to listen.
The way I have dealt with the scammers is just cut to the chase: ask for a Skype or facetime call or other form of video chat. They always have an excuse, their phone is broken, their country has forbidden video, etc. They even go as far as to feign disgust thinking that the other person wants to do the whole webcam sex thing. I don’t. I just want verification that I am talking to who I am talking to. I once got as far as a webcam conversation where it was dark on their end…and although they claimed it didn’t work, I could clearly hear them typing in the background.
Jenn says
I’d occasionally get them, but mostly the responses I got were okay. Mostly form letters and one sentence emails even though I had a very thorough and well-written essay. I think the difference with me is that I’m not sexy. I am attractive, but in more of the “girl next door” kind of way. I chose not to wear anything flashy in my photos so as to avoid that kind of attention. Of course, I’ve been online for so long now that I hardly get any attention anyway.
Still-Looking says
Mischa @ 5 brings up a very good point – what type of profile pictures were used?
I’m sure there are some guys who’d proposition a nun but I imagine that most guys are like me – they adjust their approach based on a variety of factors including pictures, an assessment based off of the written profile, and the correspondence.
Some women have a profile that screams out sex – provocative clothing in every picture, comments about sex (veiled or explicit), etc. I’ve helped some women with their profiles and it takes some effort to get the right message out. If one is too cautious/conservative some men will not initiate contact and if one goes too far the other way there will be too much undesired attention.
BTW, it’s not just guys who are sexually aggressive online. I’ve had women turn the discussion to sex within the first few minutes of chatting online or ask if I’d like to see more pictures within the first few exchanges of texts.
Best advice I can give to women is to just block a man who moves much too quickly. Don’t take it personally and realize these guys are taking the spammers approach… it doesn’t take much effort to send out a huge number of messages and if only one in twenty women responds then he isn’t too concerned about the 19 he annoyed or offended.
Britt says
Please post the link to your TedX talk! I’d love to watch it!
Morris says
I’m sure both genders have issues. I have a thick skin so I guess I don’t see the big issue with just blocking all the bad messages/people. And create a filter so you can narrow the types of people that can contact you.
I’d think that beats having to create non-generic thoughtful messages to a 100 women. Just to get a dozen responses. And maybe a date or two from that. That’s what a lot of men have to go through. Now THAT must be exhausting as well.
I really think, if you’re a decent man, you’re much better off learning how to talk to women in real life. Online dating just has too many issues for both genders.
Tatiayna says
The problem I’ve encountered.. At least in America. Is that men do not approach women.. IRL.. So online is the only option.
Leanna107 says
exactly, so very true. i never get approached even when i was size six at age nineteen
Evan Marc Katz says
I really think that if real life doesn’t put you in contact with many single women, you’d be better off learning how to date online: http://www.findingtheoneonline.com – It’s a unisex product, Morris. Let me know how you like it.
Jay says
My experience with online sites was informed by Evan’s advice and very useful it was indeed. The type of site I used (which was faith-based) meant that inappropriate messages of the type mentioned above were not overt and thankfully I didn’t receive such bizarre suggestions. There were definitely those who wanted to flirt and chat rather than meet- but nothing beyond friendly and these were easily bid farewell.
Online dating is time-consuming but if you are emotionally ready to meet someone, steering clear of those who don’t seem right and meeting up with those who do is not arduous. The difficulty for me was keeping the faith that the right person would indeed show up eventually. What helped in this regard was making sure that the rest of my life – the aspects I did have influence over – were truly fulfilling so that the search online was but a detail – albeit an important one – not the only focus.
NASHWC says
Evan, I know your material caters fairly exclusively to women (hey, that’s your audience, right?), and I don’t doubt these things happen but I did want to inform the ladies here of one significant issue (besides the oh-so-common “catalog shopping” mode that appears to be an overwhelming favorite .. <sigh>) that I (and probably others) have faced with online dating (I’m speaking of Match only; from what I can see, POF and OKC are primarily just hook-up sites). The issue is this: many profiles (I est. ~5-10%) are those of part- or full-time escorts (OK, let’s just call them prostitutes, yes?). Kinda makes good business sense when you think about it, right? Focus on target-rich environments! I discovered this on a number of occasions via message exchanges and within the second or third message, she’ll start inserting snippets into the conversation like “Are you open to ..”, “Let’s meet anytime!”, “Donations appreciated!” and “Girlfriend Experience”. And it’s especially frustrating (and a little awkward) when I’m the one who initiated contact! Granted, I don’t think it happens at the same rate as those messages you mentioned, but it does happen enough to give me extra pause when evaluating profiles and communicating with women. This world is so different than what I was raised in and grew up in .. 🙁
RustyLH says
I fully believe that these things happen. You have men who have never been with a woman, even at 40 or 50 years old. They are and were social rejects, and so now, no matter what stage they are in life, they figure they have nothing to lose. It’s anonymous, so the worst that can happen is that they have to create a new email address and then a new account, when their account is banned.
Then you have the men who are trapped in sexless marriages. Same for them. What’s to lose? There is nothing to lose. It’s anonymous.
Then you have the guys whose wives completely let themselves go, so he is simply not sexually attracted anymore. So same here. It’s anonymous, so they figure that if they spam the site, they may get a nibble.
All of these guys are looking for anything they an get. Porn is only good in a pinch, when the wife is gone for two weeks. Or used in conjunction with a healthy marriage/sex life, but where the wife has a lower sex drive. At some point, you want human interaction. Something is missing without it. So they are happy if they can get some cybersex, or an in person hook-up.
The real problem lies with the fact that all men are held responsible for their actions. I mean seriously, even you Evan. As a male coach for smart, strong, successful women, I apologize on behalf of all men. They’re generally not evil people. But they really don’t get what it’s like to walk a mile in your shoes.
Uhm…WOW. I am not sure where to start with this. First, you don’t have to apologize for me, because like the many good men that are also on those sites, I don’t spam their in-box. I don’t even suggest NSA sex, so I certainly don’t get mad about it. I don’t ask them to take their top off. I don’t ask what color panties they are wearing. I don’t ask for naked pictures. I don’t ask for pictures period. The ones they post on the site are enough.
Then the condescending, “They’re generally not evil people. But they really don’t get what it’s like to walk a mile in your shoes.” We that is true, but they don’t get what it’s like to walk a mile in our shoes. I’ll spare the details, but it’s no cakewalk for us either.
Evan Marc Katz says
Rusty, I presumed you were too bright to say something this stupid: “The real problem lies with the fact that all men are held responsible for their actions.”
Um…WOW. It’s a problem when people are held responsible for their actions? Actually the problem is that men are NOT held responsible for their actions. I would hope that dating sites would BAN men who send dick pics, who write 50 emails an hour, who curse at women who reject them, who can’t take no for an answer. But they don’t.
I honestly think I gave you too much credit. You sound EXACTLY like the women who complain about men on this blog – especially when you take advice for men and say, “BUT WOMEN…!” Cry me a river, dude. If my advice to other men doesn’t apply to you, then just let it go.
starthrower68 says
I think Rusty must’ve been deeply hurt and betrayed by his ex and extending grace is difficult. And of course because we are human it is difficult to forgive. Sometimes we believe forgiving the person who has hurt us the most is the same as letting him/her off the hook. But it actually frees us instead of them. 🙂
RustyLH says
You misunderstand, but I take the blame because my sentence is worded poorly.
The real problem lies with the fact that all men are held responsible for the actions of some men.
And, it isn’t just here. In society, in general, this happens. We men are even trained this way. We play team sports and are taught that we are only as strong as the weakest link. We often pay for the mistake of one man. In the military, this is again true. One person screws up, we all pay.
The men that do those things in online dating sites will never stop so long as the site itself allows them to get away with it. The ability is there to limit you to one initial email until the person responds, and or OKs you for unlimited contact. Why don’t the dating sites do this?
Online dating should be treated like regular dating, but even women here admit that they don’t do that. I have read here and other places where women say that because of scammers, they won’t respond unless the man writes a long detailed message the first time. That’s ridiculous. Why would you put that kind of effort into somebody you don’t know, and in fact, we men also deal with the scammers. I could write a long detailed email, copy it to Word, and just roll it out every time I contact somebody. In fact, I am pretty sure many men who send long emails the first time do just that. Why send long personal emails when it may be a scammer, or the woman may in fact delete it before reading it because she is getting 50 emails a day.
If you met somebody at a party, would you walk up and just rattle off your life history and personal details before allowing the other person to respond? Of course not. So why expect that online? At the same time, you aren’t going to meet at a singles party, or speed dating event and after the initial greeting, decide to leave the premises to go someplace more private. That may happen, but not usually right after the greeting. Scammers want to get you off site as fast as possible so that their actions can’t be witnessed by the dating site.
So here is how online dating should go.
A reads B’s profile, looks at pictures, and is interested.
A sends B a flirt, wink, “interest” or a short email simply saying “Hi, nice profile.”
B receives the notification of interest, or email, then goes to A’s profile to see if the interest is reciprocated.
B then has a choice to send a notification of interest or an email, short or long. Since A started the ball rolling, B has the right to insist they write the first real conversational email. Frankly it is better if things are kept short, but shouldn’t be a requirement. We don’t need to write life history emails. Little details here and there are fine. Scammers aren’t going to do that. They want to get down to business very fast. It’s a business to them, and so they become predictable. I’m actually amazed at how quickly they will admit that their details aren’t accurate, or they have some sad excuse for not being where they said they are in their profile.
Also, if the person is worth getting to know, expect that you are not the only person they are talking to. Unless you have talked for a few months, it’s ridiculous to expect them to delete an account they likely paid money for.
Profiles should also include some deatials that separate you from other people. For instance, are you a physically affectionate person? Not all people are, so this is something a physically affectionate person needs to know. Are you a party animal? A party animal needs to know this. People try to be generic to appeal to a broad audience which is the opposite of what you want to do. If she is getting 50 emails a day, it is her fault for not being specific as to what she is looking for, and by that I don’t mean looking for a Ph.D. I mean, what will make a person’s personality mesh with yours. Can you deal with somebody who has a totally different world view/political stance? Instead we get, “sometimes I like to go out, and sometimes I like to say in.”.
SparklingEmerald says
Rusty @ 14.1.2 said “I have read here and other places where women say that because of scammers, they won’t respond unless the man writes a long detailed message the first time. “
I’ve been on this blog a long time and I have never seen anyone say that. And I have been on other forums and have never seen that. I have seen complaints about the generic form letters, the “You’re Hot” and the winks. But I have never seen anyone on this or any other blog insist on a long detailed first e-mail. I have seen being cautioned about making that first letter TOO long and TOO detailed, but I have NEVER seen anyone say they won’t respond unless the letter is long and detailed.
There is a very balanced middle ground between “You’re Hot” and a ten thousand word essay story of your life. A nice 4 or 5 line, non generic intro letter, that makes a brief reference that shows he read the profile is fine. And if you can get some humor in there, that’s a nice plus (but not mandatory)
One thing that I did like on match, that I thought was a nice alternative to winks, was the ability to comment on someone’s photos. (But not a “your gorgeous” comment, but perhaps commenting on a photo of someone participating in one of their hobbies)
So whoever said (if anyone did say it) that you have to send a loooooooong detailed intro letter, don’t listen to them. If you’re still doing the OLD thing, just send out some thoughtful 4 or 5 liners that show you read the profile. No need to spill our your entire life story in one e-mail. I have gotten those novels in the past, and it was a turn off.
And yes, I know that men have to send out tons of letters to get just a handful of responses. Another reason to keep it brief, but thoughtful.
SparklingEmerald says
I think perhaps when Rusty said “The real problem lies with the fact that all men are held responsible for their actions.”
that he meant all men (even the good ones) are blamed for the actions of the bad ones. IOW, the entire male gender takes the blames for the bad ones in the bunch. If that what he means, it is a bit ironic tho, because he does like to blame the entire female population of America for the bad behavior of some the bad ones.
Karmic Equation says
Rusty is a “Do as I say, not as I do” kind of guy. He lacks self-awareness. He occasionally makes a few good points,. but his “anger” at American women is apparent. I suspect because he’s been rejected by them more often than not. Choosing to approach women out of his league. Maybe have some success, then his lack of self-awareness causes foot in mouth disease and the American women jump ship. Whereas foreign women may not have the same awareness of his foot-in-mouth disease due English not being their first language, so he gets away with saying stuff that wouldn’t fly with American women.
The Worst says
I actually want to reply to Karmic Equation but for some reason can’t. I think it is really sad that you can literally go to sites like this dedicated to women, and other sites dedicated to men, and scroll through the comment section to see a lot of people talking past each other. You seemed pretty judgmental about what he was trying to tell you and I wonder why. Of course he gets rejected all the time, that’s the name of the game if you are a man. That is almost word for word the biggest complaint of men who have a hard time with dating. Now before you spread a few pearls of wisdom before this swine think about what I’m getting at. Often times people have problems that seem nonsensical to others. the man who has a hard time finding a date (from social anxiety, not general odiousness) asks for advice and is met at every turn with “just go ask someone out.” That would be like telling an anorexic to “just eat.” Look at the theme of this article, and the responses. A few down a woman says “I felt like a piece of meat” after getting 100 responses, she doesn’t give a time frame but from what everyone seems to say that could be anywhere from 1 to 7 days. What I see most men say after several months”I felt like a piece of sh*t,” I’m not really one for the oppression Olympics, but which would you rather feel like?
Singleton says
Morris, I’d advise you that if you’ve tried online dating (OLD) and gotten dismal results, then delete your profile. If you’re hell-bent on online dating, make sure you’re one of the 5 % of top ranked males who can capture the attention of cute girls. Pictures (Physical attractiveness) are the most important thing online (and offline). If you have great pictures, the rest of your profile can be in Swahili and it won’t matter.
Many time ago when online dating first started and Match.com was the only game in town, I told guys already that online dating is a complete waste of time and energy. Same with speed dating in any form (which also gained popularity around that time) or any quirky dating events that is design to get people together. My reasoning back then in 1995 is the same reason I’ll share today:
People (especially men) come to online dating as a final front tier, almost as a last resort. The truth is that if you’re not a handsome hunk, you’re going to be likely rebuffed by the vast majority of women.
Online dating is for people who haven’t had much success out in the real world….a “I guess I have nothing to lose” mentality. Now, generally speaking if someone doesn’t have success in real life (mainly men: since the distribution of male reproductive success -likelihood of pairing with females — is more variable and skewed than for the female reproductive success -greater mating variance in men than women-
So all online dating does is delay the inevitable; even if you could buy a little time, all the stuff that you haven’t worked on, that forced you into online dating in the first place, will still come back to bite you.
sylvia says
I would assume that this would apply to women, too? That online dating sites are a last resort and those that use it are delaying the inevitable?
Traveller says
To a large extent that seems to be true. I’ve found that an enormously high proportion of women online are what I would have to characterize as, shall we say, “extremely troubled” or worse. If you can find a site where 20% of the women seem halfway normal, then you’re doing really well.
Most women I talk to seem to feel that the proportions for males are about the same.
SquarePeg says
I disagree about needing to have a hot photo; it just has to be better in comparison to the thousands of selfies taken in a mirror or the ones where the camera is so close to their face that you can see every imperfection. Cell phone photos make most people look worse than they actually do.
As a research project, do a search for people of your gender. You’ll see what I mean. You don’t have to do much to exceed that.
MilkyMae says
You may get 100 emails and you rule out 95. Then you end up with 5 men who happen to be reasonable choices for 50 to 100 women. So the end result is that you feel like a piece of meat with a ton of competition.
Julia says
As someone who dated online on and off for about 4 years (with a 2 year break in between) its really not that bad. I’ve luckily never received a dick pic (though some guys just put them in their profile, I would always flag it and block them) I ignored the duds and the dudes looking for hookups and concentrated on the men I was interested in. Maybe I have a thick skin because I’m pretty used to men yelling vile things at me IRL. If its on a screen I can just delete it and if its particularly egregious, or a man contacts me several times, I would block them. I managed to date close to 50 men in a course of 20 months, had 2 starter relationships and met my lovely, live in boyfriend finally at the beginning of this year.
A good profile, good photos and some flirtatious correspondence can take you from 1 date a month land to 2 dates a week in no time. Evan has some fine products for people who need help writing a profile, you can even hire a professional photographer. I’d recommend it anyone who wants to find themselves in a relationship.
Blondie99 says
2 dates a week? I had tons of dick pics and could go on a date every day of the month if I wanted to, but they were all bad dates. It is about finding quality men not quantity. I must be doing something wrong. All the first dates wanted second many of them to the point that I had to block them from my phone because they would not take no for an answer.
Lily says
I absolutely agree. I just found a keeper after a breakup almost six months ago. I endured the “pups” trying to bed a cougar on okcupid (evidently there isn’t a way to filter these annoying boys on that site), got some really uncouth characters blocked on both okcupid and POF, fell for a married man (who was lying, of course) briefly from ourtime, but now found myself a wonderful, smart, funny, sexy man who is retired. I used the search criteria on POF quite extensively for education level as I really want someone who challenges me mentally.
I would NEVER have found him in “real life.” I work in an office with one other woman. I had been sitting on those sites getting lots of messages but I changed my approach. I saw the research that okcupid did that showed that women will find a higher quality man if the woman sends out messages (women get a higher response rate than men do). So that’s what I did, and I ended up with SIX high-quality men to meet and get to know. My response rate was quite high. (All were smart, educated, interesting, accomplished, and were my peers with owning their own homes, having jobs, having a retirement. I don’t need a man to support me, but I want a man who can take care of himself financially, and I make that clear on my profile.) Out of those six, this man has fallen hard and fast. He fell in love with me and asked me to be in an exclusive relationship before we had sex. (And it was all so easy and natural, I didn’t have to try to manipulate him.) And I trust it. He is 61 and understands he’s lucky to have found someone so compatible. This has happened to me twice in the past six years, and the first time was definitely true love, and he would have married me, except as time went on, I saw reasons that it wouldn’t work for me for the rest of my life.
And oh, I did discover a technique that I think weeded out the men that I didn’t want: on the phone before the meet ‘n’ greet, I mentioned that I had been “pawed” on the meet’n’greet by other men recently, and I said that men who do that “don’t get a girl like me.” It made my expectation very clear, and my guy wasn’t looking for a one-night stand anyway.
So is it easy to find someone online? No, but Evan’s resources are invaluable.
And, Singleton, I did end up with a handsome man, but beyond the criteria of wanting a man in decent physical shape who takes care of his body, as I do, looks were not the most important thing for me. The man I ended up with had posted, among other photos, pics of him at the gym that I found attractive. (I post a gym photo as well.)
Online dating is an excellent resource for those of us who do not meet appropriate members of the opposite sex in real life. I think it’s unnecessary to paint people who are dating online as losers who can’t meet people in real life, as a previous post indicated. This is a site for people who are positive, and learning, and want to make this work, using Evan’s excellent advice.
Jen says
Haha, Lily. Good description. I’ll start calling them pups from now on. I asked one of them why he was messaging a woman old enough to be his mother. He said he liked older women and found me attractive. I sent him on his way. I think they’ve watched too many episodes of Cougar Town.
Taylor says
I’ve done online dating on and off for years, with some temporary success but I am single now. I am only on Match because I paid for a year and am too frugal to quit! When you’re busy and have kids, like me, online dating CAN be a good option that connects you with men you wouldn’t meet elsewhere. But its strength–access to many men–is also its weakness. There’s almost too much choice for most people! As someone once said to me, it’s a buffet of dating. Unless they are creeps from the get go, I give most men three dates. I know well that not everyone clicks instantly on the first meeting.
Still, because there is so much choice, I think many men (and women) go back online pretty quickly if they don’t hook up on the first date. If you ask enough times, there will always be someone willing to hook up. Online dating creates that access much easier. In fact, because men are willing to sleep with any woman, as long as she has a pulse, and there are women desperate enough to do them thinking they will do it well enough to get a commitment, online dating will be more advantageous for men than it will be for women.
Unless the site is specific to one category of people, based on faith etc, you will get emails from just about every kind of man out there, most of whom you’d never date in the offline world. I think, too, the weirdos outnumber the nice ones or the weirdos are just more aggressive.
But I’ve experienced repulsive behaviour from the “good” ones, too. It’s like online dating and the impersonal nature of it gives men the leeway, even the permission, to behave badly. As someone mentioned earlier, the number of married men online is atrocious. And they all have the same excuses: my wife is boring, let herself go, doesn’t put out. Because I live in a relatively small city, I see men I know on there, MARRIED or coupled men, looking for women, some clearly lying about their status and even where they live.
All of these gets quite frustrating for women and you need to just quit once in awhile and be single. While I still believe there are good men out there, online and offline, once my membership is done, I won’t be investing in online dating again and will join a gym or get a hobby instead. In some ways, dating in my 40s is far more foolish than it was in my 20s.
sandra says
Taylor,
Everything you said is so right on, I could not have said it any better myself . I am dating men in their 40s-50s and the atrocious behavior and false claims on profiles is staggering. I could care less if a man is not happy in is marriage or wants to cheat, not my problem, he picked her. What is so disturbing is that these men have no problem wasting a single woman`s time who is seeking bona fide LTR. And of course they will not advertise on an intimate encounter or NSA site, they would prefer to lie to a woman who would never knowingly have anything to do with them.
Taylor says
You have to love, too, the married men who, when you turn them down, even nicely, get mad and aggressive and call you a bitch, as if somehow you owe them sex because they aren’t getting it at home.
Mona says
Ohhh yes, Taylor! My God! I Feel like stating (though I try to keep a somewhat positive/neutral profile up) on my profile that “If I DID want to ruin my karma and go against my own morals and sleep with another womans man, my profile would have STATED THIS”. But it doesnt matter. If youre reasonably pretty no one reads your profile anyway; its just about the pics, for them. I also have to assume that the same jerks are sending the same jerky messages to the every unsuspecting woman within a 500 mile radius. Its not me; its them. I also want to tell married men that if I can get great SINGLE men then why would I want YOU? To hear about your problems of marriage that a single FREE girl never has to worry about. Ever? That usually shuts them up LOL. *shrugs*
Traveller says
I guess I don’t see how this is really any different for men or women.
Of the messages I get online (both responses and those initiated by women) well over 90% are phonies of some kind. Either prostitutes, con artists, scammers, sex-site operators, married women looking to cheat, teenage boys posing as women, spammers trolling for addresses, female prisoners, gold diggers, freaks, psychos, jailbait, catfishers, exhibitionists, drug pushers, and lots of just horribly damaged women of one sort or another.
Yes, most of it is disgusting and repulsive, but that’s what the “delete’ key is for.
txcharisma says
While I received plenty of the standard solicitations for NSA/hookups, one of the biggest shocks for me while I was in the OLD World (Match.com & EHarmony) were the number of men who kept things “normal” during online conversations and then immediately suggested coming home with them on the conclusion of the first or second date- & were genuinely upset when I declined.
Nevertheless, I’d like to encourage those guys on here who feel like OLD is only for the elite 5% of gorgeous/successful/etc. men… my sweet fiance and I met on EHarmony a little over 19 months ago. He’s a decent looking guy (I think he’s gorgeous, but objectively, he’s about average) & has a fairly low-profile but stable career & is in his mid thirties (I’m 28, in a stable career, & girl next door pretty- ie. Not model gorgeous). I loved what he wrote in his first message and on his profile, we had a fantastic first date and 19 months later (5 days ago) he proposed.
All I suppose I’m saying is– I think the right place/right time factor comes into play in relationships formed both of and on the Web. There’s plenty of unpleasant people online, but every once in a while, if you keep looking, you may stumble upon a gem.
Just my .02 cents- but I think “average joes” are the best 🙂
Singleton says
“Maybe I have a thick skin because I’m pretty used to men yelling vile things at me IRL. If its on a screen I can just delete it and if its particularly egregious, or a man contacts me several times, I would block them.”
Well, they key is that some males are more likely to use sexually coercive messages if they are disadvantaged in gaining access to desirable mates, a male frustration with sending emails to women who never respond or have a decent courtesy of sending an email back stating they are not interested but continues to ignore. Women should understand that this subset of rude or sexually explicit messages can be portrayed as the consequence of the frustration due to getting low response rates. Because being shot down online is only painful in its cumulative effect.
Julia says
“a male frustration with sending emails to women who never respond or have a decent courtesy of sending an email back stating they are not interested but continues to ignore.”
So I think there is a misconception among some male (and maybe female daters) that you are owed a “not interested” message. Its a strange belief to be held, really no one owes you anything. When I was looking for a job I would send resumes and individually tailored cover letters to several employers a day. Despite my efforts, I never heard back from 90% of them. Sure, it would be nice for them to let me know I wasn’t the right candidate but their silence was enough to let me know as much. Likewise, I’ve sent many silly/funny/flirty messages to men when I was dating online and heard nothing, again their silence spoke. Why can’t people just understand that just because they sent someone a message they aren’t owed a response, a response is sort of a nice surprise.
Ultimately, if you send enough individualized, flirty messages you will get a bite. If you send out a copy and paste forms, a was up? message or worse, then don’t be surprised if you don’t get any bites. Read Evan’s Finding the One Online if you think it will help craft a better profile and better messages.
douglas says
why waste the time, in a cut and paste world with a 95 percent fail rate, even with his advice it would be foolish. simple economics, low success rate equals low effort. Dic pics and all the things woman complain about of online dating goes with the concept “you are owed nothing”, not even a response or a proper introduction. in other words it works both ways. humanity is earned not given.
Maria Almudena says
Douglas: Sending unsolicited dick pics and insulting women on dating sites is NOWHERE NEAR the same universe as failing to reply to someone you’re not interested in.
Julia is correct that no reply IS a reply in itself, and people of normal intelligence understands this. People of normal intelligence also understand that a woman needs to be interested in YOU first before they are anywhere ready to begin thinking about your dick. And insulting people for not being interested in you does not align with the concept of “you are owed nothing”, it aligns more with “you deserve abuse for not doing what I want you to do”.
Your “both ways” thing doesn’t convince me. We are talking about ways that don’t equate at all.
One of the reasons we women don’t send “thanks but not interested’ replies is defensive: because many men take even the politest of rejections as their cue to challenge us as to why/why not, to try to entice us with aforementioned dick pics or to verbally abuse us.
SpanklingEmerald says
I’ve gone back and forth on weather or not I should send a “No thanks” e-mail or not. I read a survey where men were asked if they wanted a “Thanks but no thanks” response and it was split about 50/50.
If there was a “non offensive” reason such as distance, smoking or age, I might send back a a short note along the lines of “Thanks for reaching out to me, but I am looking for someone local” to the out of staters. Which I think was pretty generous of me, since I EXPLICITLY state that I am looking for someone within 50 miles of me. (Zip codes show on match.com), so if someone from thousands of miles away reaches out to me, they should be able to figure from my silence, that I really meant it when I set a 50 mile limit.
I stopped sending out the courtesy notes tho, because I started getting arguments in return. (at which point I blocked them)
Seriously, a total stranger on the internet doesn’t owe you a response. The silence says it.
Many men (not all) as evidenced by the number of letters to this blog and other dating services think it’s OK to disappear without a trace or an explanation after sex. I wonder if these same men think they are owed an explanation after a cut and paste e-mail to a stranger on an online dating site ?
I got off of OKC because I was getting nasty grams from men along the lines of “Why didn’t you write back to me” when they e-mailed me less than 24 hours ago.
And then there was the guy on match.com who kept sending me a wink, like, game, e-mail message every hour from 11PM at night until the wee hours of the morning. I woke up and there were all his messages lined up. Towards the end his letters got nasty and demanding, wanting to know why I hadn’t responded. His final e-mail to me was a crude sexual remark.
I reported and blocked him. Match.com acknowledged receipt of my complaint. A month later he was still on the site.
The only reason now I could see to send a “Thanks but no thanks” letter on match.com is if you are trying to score an extra 6 month membership. If you keep your profile active the entire 6 months and send out e-mails to at least 6 new people a month you (theoretically) can get another 6 months for free. So if you haven’t found 6 people to respond to affirmatively, I suppose you could make up the difference with a “Thanks but no thanks note”. But otherwise, I see no point.
starthrower68 says
Unfortunately as the culture continues to coarsen, it will get worse before it ever gets better.
kneedajob says
This is true, Emerald. This is why (to the men writing a response complaining about the women) it doesn’t compare to being the woman on the site.
Kristen says
I would actually rather be ignored than treated like a walking orifice.Men DO think women owe them just on account of them having a penis.Its absolutely disgusting!.
Blondie99 says
Same here. I too started out sending the no thanks emails, but most of the men would want to engage in arguments with me, get even meaner or ask me why I did not like them. It’s like a stalker if you show them any sort of attention even a not thanks attention it feeds their interest. It is better to just ignore them.
MoodSwingMom says
You owe no one a response. I found responding only encouraged them.
goldielox says
It’s totally that bad, if not worse. They have no respect, decorum, manners or even anything interesting to say. It’s bad. I’m disgusted by how many of them talk about sex within the first couple of interaction.
Martha says
The “even anything interesting to say” makes online dating/communicating even more difficult. I find the messages I receive include one of only four things:
1. A comment on how I look in my photo (That’s nice, but did you read the profile? Saying “You’re very attractive” won’t automatically get you a date with me. I know you have eyes. I know you can use them.)
2. A request to meet immediately — sometimes in the first or second message.
3. Zero questions about me/my hobbies/my interests/what they read in the profile that would spark a conversation
4. A sexually graphic or curious question or observation
They’re not engaging in a conversation. They’re not asking open ended questions. They want to meet immediately (as in, within 2-3 hours). They speak or ask about something sexual much too soon.
Traveller says
Martha:
What you say certainly makes sense. I’ve heard the same from many other women, complaining about the abrupt, crude, illiterate, or distasteful messages they receive.
And yet – hearing this makes think that one would welcome a nice, polite, well-worded and interesting inquiry. Based on the number of complaints that I’ve heard, I would have thought that something like that would stand out like a sore thumb, and get a MUCH better rate of replies.
But it doesn’t. Sending a nice, well-crafted letter that is thoughtful, interesting and makes it clear that the man has read what you had to say and is genuinely interested in you, gets no more interest than a generic “What’s up”, or a mechanical copy-and-paste job does.
I really don’t understand why. If you really want a decent, interesting & interested man, then why ignore him when he DOES come along? Particularly given that women seem to think that such a guy is so rare.
Kate says
I make a point of responding to anyone who has obviously taken the time to read my profile and writes a thought out, well pucuated, respectfuly response, whether I am interested or not. If I’m not I thank him for his kind response but I just don’t think we are a good match but I wish him all the best on his search. I have yet to have anyone respond poorly to that.
If all I get is “ur hot” or “so sexi” then I don’t respond at all. I think men who put the time into a thoughtful response will not be offended or angry because they are well adjusted, intelligent men. Men who cant take the time to spell out “you are” aren’t worth my time in general.
Blondie99 says
I get a lot of comments on appearance too, but I am a female and if I like a guy I am the person asking to meet up on the first or second email. Here is why, 70% of those people are lying. They post old pictures are five inches shorter, etc. You cannot find that out just talking to them. I stopped wasting my time on that. You waste a month talking to someone only to find out they are liars. Plus chemistry is only felt in person.
Kristen says
And every single one of them is trying to get someone out of their league.Its sad.
Steve says
You grow up, and you have some kind of space in society and you know basically where you are and you know who would date you and who would not date you, who is kind of outside of your league, in general terms, and you know where you fit in the social hierarchy.
In my expe ri ences in the real world off-line, I’m able to attract some women who are of a middle level attrac tiveness, even a few women moderately attractive. And I know where I am in the sociosexual hierarchy off-line.
I have joined quite a lot of dating sites and you know, but I only get replies from unattractive/fat girls online (usually older than me), all of a sudden I started wondering about where do I fall now in the social hierarchy? I was trying to think about, do I fall in the same place? I’m kind of the same person online, but I look much less attractive in photo. Right? And would the women who would date me before in the real world would keep on dating me now on-line? I did not know why my success rate was far higher in the real world than it is online.
And I found out, while average women can be collecting over 25 messages a day in online dating, for the men, data suggests that you’re screwed if you’re not above a high threshold of aesthetic desirability. Female daters are not aware that even moderately-attractive guys are getting insanely poor outcomes, both in appearance quality and quantity of girls interested. It seems that only very good-looking guys (on the 5 quintile of attractiveness spectrum) are who can capture widespread female interest. So we can infer in a rather cynical and sorely manner, that unless your profile photos are at the top of attractiveness spectrum, most girls won’t be paying attention on a dating site.
Yes, it’s women, not men, who have unrealistic standards for the “average” member of the opposite sex. I mean there are few extremely attractive guys out there. The main idea as relevant to OLD is that when you take a populational cross-section of a continuous variable, such as beauty, you tend to find that “most people” fall somewhere in the middle, duh, with a decreasing proportion of the population as you approach either extreme. but women rate 80-90% of men as sub-par!.
NASHWC says
Have you seen the dating analysis reports that OKC publishes? Evan might frown on me putting the link here so I won’t, but it’s fairly easy to find with a web search. They have an extensive database of profile and interaction data patterns and have produced numerous analytical reports of what people write in their profiles, who they initiate or respond to (and who they don’t) all broken down by various demographic metrics and pivot points (interestingly, Asian and Black men get beat up pretty hard by women in general; a bit of a surprise to me). And most all of what you said is easily validated by this data. BTW, their report did include an interesting snippet “As a whole, women considered greater than 80% of the men ‘undateable'”. While I would agree that, for the most part, men flub at dating and most just dont take care of themselves. However, it also says about the general shallowness of women online and their tendency to treat online dating as “catalog shopping” (i.e. – “there’s always (or might be) someone better out there”).
Personally, I have experienced the same issues you described. In real life, I regularly get extended looks (oddly, even from allot of men; and yes, I’m fairly certain most all of them are straight) and friendly, receptive smiles through the day and have little problem sustaining the positive attention of most all woman I give attention to. And yes, I do sense all the staring just like women do but I’m probably not as well practiced as most women at internally ignoring it. I figure my ‘close rate’ (securing a number and/or date) is at or better than 50% average. Now that may seem awful to some, but most single guys would say that’s good. And keep in mind that often times I will discover the woman I am ‘hitting on’ or flirting with has a SO (boyfriend, husband) sometimes even a girlfriend; hey, I’ll admit that my ‘gaydar’ is not perfect, I’m just not well-practiced with that.
I just turned 49 and I’m 6′-2″ w/ athletic build, no kids, excellent mid 6-figure career, well-versed in numerous subject areas, and communicate a dominate/masculine presence (most all men defer to me in public and even today I still feel a little awkward inside when this happens). Based on my experiences, I would estimate that I’m a solid 7 but when I get dressed up to go out (and I do dress well, thank you), I might easily pass for an 8 or better. I never say I look younger than my age, but I do know I’m considered more attractive than most all others guys in my +/-5 age range. However, online? … crickets .. Not a big deal really. I used online sites simply as a supplemental contact generator to reach those I would not normally encounter, as my life can be rather busy at times. I advise all men who will listen (those below the 90 percentile, anyways) not to expect much when using online dating. Instead, work to maximize your personal appeal, get out and talk to women, smile allot, act generous and kind, and look at rejection as your friend (it frees up time to focus on those women who are receptive to you!) and treat each rejection as a learning lesson that helps you get better at your approach game! For the guys, I will tell you this: always remember, women CRAVE attention! And thanks to third-wave feminism (and other reasons), there are a TON of bored and lonely (and lovely) women just waiting to bask in the undivided attention of a masculine and confident man! Go get you some!
Steve says
Yes I’m aware of a bunch of studies based on dataset obtained from a OLD sites. Having said that, I think talking to women in-person is a far more efficient use of our time. Consider this. I was on OLD for about 4 months or so. I easily sent several hundred messages, and got a whopping <5% response rate. This means: only 1 out of 20 girls even RESPONDED to my message occasionally and seemed interested at first. Moreover once I reply back to them, they quite often stop replying. So I finally only could get a few real contacts from overweight & unattractive females (often older than me). In the end, I was contacting somen I’d never speak with in real life (other than drunk at 5:00 a.m in a bar.) All of them were too far away from I can consider as potential mate, at least a long term partner.
Honesly I came to OLD because off-line I face with a limited set of romantic options. I could not meet physically attractive enough women interested towards me. What is the pool of eligible mates for an average-Joe? i don’t know but anyway offline I have be able to date some girl within a subset of decent-looking women.
However on dating sites I didn’t get replies or got replies from unattractive girls. So Increasing frequency of OLD effort and translated into an acceptance rate lower than offline world. And of course this receptive subset of girls will be likely in the bottom half of the beauty distribution. Really is it worth?
Another question kept popping into my head: What kind of person succeeds in the world of online dating? Is it different from actual dating? Can you get away with more? Or less? Essentially, what do girls look for in a virtual partner? I tried to find out.
To help figure this out, I made two fakes male profiles using photos of real guys I know. I took this photos from his real facebooks. Dudes who are 5-6s but both of them are dating two cute girlfriends (about 7-8s). I sent messages from this fake profiles, to countless female users, but the response rate were extremely low. Women who replied them were women below average and far away from the physical attractiveness of their real girlfriends. Really is it worth or online dating is futile?
It seems as if online women fantasizes about being swept off her feet by a Prince Charming. The inflated self-perceived sexual value these women develop spills out into the real world, making it more difficult to get replies back. Women on dating sites have astronomically high standards and they are fixated on the top %10-20 of the most handsome males. And for the 80-90% rest of male population OLD is futile.
Paula says
If you google stats on online dating, the odds for a man to hear back from a woman is like 1 in 20 or 1 in 25 (can’t remember). For women, it’s 1 in 5. So your odds are on par. Last time I did the online dating thing and sent out 10 emails and got back zero responses and these were men I thought were in my league. There’s no point in sulking about not hearing from women because it happens to women too.
Al says
You keep mentioning that you can’t find “Attractive” enough women for your tastes. You have certain standard that you feel entitled to and only got replies from women you’d “never speak with in real life (other than drunk at 5:00 a.m in a bar.)” Nice.
Has it ever occurred to you that to those “cute” women YOU might be the loser no one would talk to in real life? Just saying.
A lot of men seem to think that they have better chances with a woman online than they would in real life. Men hit on women on Match that they would never DARE try to approach in a bar. The sad truth is that your chances with that hot babe are not better online. In fact, there is as much, if not MORE competition for that same hottie online.
JennLee says
She’s right Steve. The same way you look at those of us that don’t meet your approval, that is the same way the women you want are looking at you, and thinking yuck.” Face it Steve, you aren’t going to get one of those top 20%. If you were, you would already be getting them. You have two options. #1 which is the easiest and most realistic option is that you take a reality check. Realize that you are never going to get one of the hotties, or even the almost hotties. Then, you can start to go on dates with the women who actually will date you.
#2 You can do a total make-over. Maybe even get plastic surgery. Get into a class at the local college. Something that makes you interesting to talk to. If you smoke, stop. If your hair is not a professioonal style, as what you might where as a lawyer, get a new cut and style. Find a few women you know that are friends or relatives, and are late 20a to early 40s. Have them go with you to buy new clothes. Tell them you want a style makeover. Look in some of the magazines for inspiration, such as Vogue, Cosmo, Esquire, Details, Maxim and GQ. The first two I read, and the other my boyfriend reads. We never shop for clothes for him without looking through those issues to see what is in them. We don’t pay attention to the obviously artsy pictures, the edgy pictures with high fashion models. We look at the ones where it looks like normal people in a normal everyday picture. If we were to see a certain type of shirt in several pictures in multiple magazines, we know to look for that. It will also help with color selection and patterns.
Get rid of anything edgy, like a nose ring or hipster beard. You can maybe add it back in once you are in a solid relationship. Clean cut sells to a wider audience.
Claire says
“always remember, women CRAVE attention!”
No, we don’t. Some of us crave intelligent, thoughtful conversations about science, humanities, politics, or philosophy. Most of us definitely do not “CRAVE attention!” from a man who nourishes the fantasy that third-wave feminism creates “bored and lonely” women who desire a “masculine and confident man” to entertain them — (because, y’know, we’re incapable of hanging out with friends, participating in the arts, or finding other cool, exciting things to do on our non-work time). Yet you accuse us of being “shallow” and catalog-shopping — but when you do it, it’s a “supplemental contact generator” where you can conveniently ignore the women who don’t respond to you. Rest assured, we’re not craving attention from someone who thinks like you.
Blondie99 says
I’m a female in my mid 30s and I agree with you. I get close to 100 emails a week, I may respond to one.
Christine says
Wow, if I may ask, how do you sort through 100 emails?! How do you decide who to write back to? I guess you must be super hot to get that many. I didn’t get nearly as much, probably because I’m more of a “girl next door” than a super hot Victoria’s Secret type. I’m sure you’ll find your match. If a regular woman like me can get a boyfriend through online dating, I imagine hotter ones definitely could.
Blondie99 says
Hi Christine this is to you but I cannot reply to you direct for some reason. See that’s the problem you cannot possibly sort through all those emails in an effective manner. I go with pictures just because it is quickest and the truth is that is a very bad method because I overlook a lot of guys that probably just do not photograph well and if I met them in person would be really great guys! Most of the guys I met and dated were ones I personally messaged. I can’t find a boyfriend online for this reason. That’s why I wish men that email women would do so only if they met my criteria. Most of the emails are from men 15 years older or 10 years younger, who smoke who live across the country. So yes I receive quantity but most is not quality. Yes I guess I am hot but I don’t like to say that. I am very petite 5’1 in good shape, DD natural breasts, with long blond hair. I am also a lawyer and I have no children and have never been married. Who knows. I actually stopped doing it because it was ineffective. Too much work. I could have had a date every night of the week, some weeks I did, but no quality and lots of liars. I cannot imagine what women in their 20s must get!
Christine says
I sympathize because I went through something similar–I didn’t have 100 emails, but also got regularly contacted by men nowhere near my preferences. My memory’s rusty so I forget exactly what this is called, but I remember match.com had some mechanism where they filter emails for you, and stick those outside your preferences to some separate folder so that they’re not in your inbox. I actually found out about this by chance. One day, some administrator suddenly emailed me, saying they noticed I was getting emails outside my preferences and asking if I wanted to set this filtering service up.
I have stopped online dating after meeting my boyfriend, so I don’t know if they still have that (or if whatever site you’re on has that). However, it’s just an idea–maybe you can ask the site administrator if they could do a thing like that for you. If you could set something like that up, it would make your inbox more manageable. Yes, you’d get less overall quantity, but I’m sure you’d rather get a few people who could possibly be right, than a ton of people who definitely aren’t. Quality over quantity! Good luck!
The Worst says
Total lawyer move. Deflect the accusation of hotness then go on to describe a huge percent of men’s literal dreams both physically and mentally. Do you have a hard time with men finding you intimidating? of course i ask in an ironically flirty way because of the content of this article, but I mean it in all seriousness. I imagine you are stuck in a weird place where the men older than you are set into a bygone paradigm of socioeconomic operation, and younger men grew up in an era of tinder and dropbox. A strange dichotomy to be sure, but one I imagine that poses unique dating challenges.
AME says
Thank you for your much appreciated comment, NASHWC. Very well elaborated and interesting points you made. I just love you advise as to treat rejection as a learning lesson. It goes both ways (women and men) get rejected, and that is totally find. It is a learning process and it only makes you stronger. Just as you said, it liberates you from paying attention to the wrong person and that frees you up for the right one. Sp, rejection can be a good thing sometimes. My favorite comment of yours is that for men on not to expect too much from online dating but to focus on working on improving their appearance, smile, be kind and generous. I think we women can use that advice too. I think when you know who you are and where you stand, rejection does not affects you because you know that sooner or latter the right person will come along. Thank you!
Taylor says
I realize looks are important and both genders are guilty of going for the most attractive of men and women online. I have great pics, professionally taken, but in casual settings and I have all of my clothes on.
But it’s not about looks; it’s about polish. I no longer answer emails from men with no photos; a good number of them are married. But if you have photos, please let it be decent. No selfies in the bathroom without your shirt on. No photos of you taken from half a mile away. No photos of you with other women, even if they are friends/relatives (we don’t know that).
Put on a decent shirt, shave and at least make an attempt at a good impression. I have met men online whose photos did them no justice and they were very good looking in person. I’ve also dated men who weren’t terribly attractive but hilarious and nice. So I don’t always take the photo for what it’s worth.
But all of these men had POLISH. They put some effort into their appearance.
I won’t respond to men who don’t even try and have shots of themselves in beer shirts and looking like they’ve not showered for days. With online dating, women have to take into account their own safety. We are essentially taking a shot on strange men we’ve met on the Internet. This is kind of crazy if you really think about it.
If you look dangerous, we (well, some women) won’t put ourselves out there for men who look sketchy.
Clean up, boys.
RustyLH says
I do not understand why people think they must get a rejection note from somebody who is not interested. I myself am not comfortable sending them. I also really don’t care to receive them. I agree with the person above who said silence is enough. Does it really make you feel good to see a letter stating that they are not interested? Is there really a way to say that that does not sting even just a little bit? If you send out 10 messages on a day off, and then over the next few days you get 10 “no thank you” emails, is that going to make you feel better? Time is money. I don’t need to open up messages, hoping to get a nice replay, only to see it is a rejection message. Actually, I think getting a rejection note is worse, because you go to your inbox and see that you have a message from the person, and you start to get a little excited, then open it and get crushed. One isn’t going to be too bad, especially when you get one that is interested in getting to know you…but imagine having a bad week or two and you get nothing but rejection messages. It’s not going to make you feel better.
I think online sites should change. Many of the dating services didn’t allow any communication until both parties agreed they were interested in meeting. Maybe online dating sites should have a “show interest” button to click, such as some of the Cupid sites do, but until the other person also clicks on “show interest” on your profile, you can’t send messages. It would also help cut down on the scams.
Also, I do not understand men thinking it is OK to send nasty emails. Dating sites need to do a better job of policing that. Once can be excused, and given a warning. Second offense should get a temporary ban, maybe a week, or month, and then a 3rd offense should get a permanent ban. 3 strikes and you are out. If the person is not interested, then what good does it do to vent at them about it? It does no good at all.
Steve says
OLD sites don’t care about making the experience good for their users, or whether anyone actually succeeds in meeting someone worthwhile, they just want the money.
This is why bad behaviour on OLD sites is generally not policed, unless of course, it’s one of those evil menz who sent a woman a pic she thought was offensive (even if it wasn’t offensive at all).
Tulips says
Hi Evan
Can you please post the link of the TED talk you gave? It sounds like it will be interesting:)
Thanks in advance!
Dina Strange says
You know what i encountered in my online dating experience. And i sort of want to make a statement about it. As a female who is 36 years old, and weights 115lbs…it’s incredibly hard for me to find a man in his 30’s who is not already fat. Something happens to men after 30 years old, where they completely let themselves go. I mean, i see a lot of men who let themselves go, gained weight, and just don’t look healthy.
Guys, please – we women are as visual as you are. You expect a woman who takes care of herself, so why you let themselves go. I mean going to the gym 3 times a week, and eating somewhat good food and shaving and wearing clean clothing, it’s not that hard is it?
Taylor says
A lot of the men and women who get married really young let themselves go. I find men in their 40s who were married before look much, much older than men the same age who’ve never been married. I get emails from men in their 50s who look as old as my grandfather.
Marriage, for either gender, is not an excuse to stop taking care of yourself.
Matt says
I’m 33, male, 6’1″, 180lbs (I just had to go back to a 32″ pants because I lost some weight). I have long well kept hair, and look a bit like Fabio. I own a house, 2 cars, no debt and have an upper 5 figure income running my own business.
I’ve never had sex to completion (the two times I attempted, I really wasn’t into either of them, and gave up after a minute), and the longest relationship I’ve had was a 3 year on and off thing. When I was in my 20’s, I think I was a bit too needy and women sensed it. Now in my 30’s, I don’t care a whole lot, and hit on about one woman a month. Heck, I don’t even ask for their number. I talk to them for a few minutes and hand them my card. And no, I don’t play the “Baller” card, sure I’m worth $250,000, but the last thing I need is a gold digger.
AllHeart81 says
Women like men that make money. That doesn’t mean she is a gold-digger. Men pick women they are very attracted to – doesn’t mean that all he wants from her is her body. A woman may like that you make money – but don’t act like you don’t pick women for equally shallow reasons.
Olena says
You sound pretty much like some I would message on OKcupid or POF (I am 32, 5’8, make 50k a month). Heck I message people with much lower incomes. Anything over 25 k will do. Not because I am a gold digger, but because I am tired of dating men who tell me “Babe, I am broke, can you lend me $300 till my next pay cheque?” Usually I do not get responses from men I send messages to though.
Guys that message me are usually freshmen from India that can barely speak English (and are a bit too young for me), unkempt men in their 40s (most of them in really poor shape) inviting me over for Netflix and chill, and bitter gentlemen with obvious self-esteem issues. Yes, I usually do not reply to those, because I feel I can do better. I guess that makes makes me a shallow person.
Al says
No doubt! I see this all the time too. So many men (supposedly) my age look older than my DAD. What’s up with that? And they all want young, hot women who “take care of themselves” too. Wow. Talk about hypocrisy!
If you expect someone who takes care of herself to consider you then you need to take care of yourself first buddy.
Kate says
And the age appropriate men that DO look good and take care of themselves, have their act together etc. want the 23 year old Barbies! I am 41 and tend to either get the 25 year old kids wanting a “cougar” or the 58 year old men who want a younger pretty woman (but one who is free to travel and without kids!!) Finding a good looking, funny, smart 45 year old man is like finding a unicorn, and when you do find one, he is chasing the fairies!!
GL says
So I was thinking of another type of guy that ends up on online dating sites, they are not sleazy, perhaps they should be called: “The Lonely Guys.” Now I have been guilty of attaching too early to men out of loneliness, but I’m not a creeper. The advances of The Lonely Guy get creepy, it’s almost as if it’s a Twilight movie and they have imprinted on you like the werewolves. For example, one guy lived in a town a couple hours north of me, and he was insisting on taking me out on this amazing dinner and wining and dining me. The way he was talking to me, it was like we were already together. I ended up saying I wasn’t interested before he made the trek south, and he told me I was “cruel.” I believe another guy drove 2 and half hours from Chicago to my neighborhood. I had told him which neighborhood I lived in and he was familiar. He was trying to pressure me into getting together that day, and I had other obligations. I was really wondering if he had driven all the way up to where I lived! Then just recently I could see this guy attaching to me, because I responded to his texts (all day). I broke it off out of consideration to him, as I didn’t want it to advance any further, and he said that I had “played him for a fool.” We hadn’t known each other barely 2 weeks, had one brief date. To his credit, he wasn’t creepy. Beware the Lonely Guy, they think you are together simply because you talk to them a few times!
SparklingEmerald says
When I was on match, I kept meeting “lonely guy’s” second cousin, and that is “friendless guy”. I mean guys with ZERO friends. Not even casual guys that they hang out and watch sports with. ZIP. Often times, family live elsewhere also. As a result, they have NO SOCIAL skills. (or perhaps they have no social skills and that’s why they are friendless) Having “no friends” was never consciously on my check list (which is very short BTW) but I’m beginning to think it should be. These zero friends guy always seem to end up being a bad relationship bet.
Cynthia says
Let’s not forget the stalkers. They ask for a date instantly. The date is almost like an interview; all the questions are about you only, he’s compare’s you to the other women of the month….. you can barely ask any about him. After the date, the calls, text messages and emails begin… and he is begging……you disappear from the dating site. Six months later you return …. He appears again…. He waited for you!
Al says
Sadly, there are far too many of these guys around. There was one who actually got angry with me for not shutting my profile down after merely exchanging a few short messages with him over just TWO DAYS. He thought that, once HE’D decided I was the one (prior to even meeting in person mind you), I should fall right into line and stop speaking to anyone else. Crazy.
I also hate the ones who pressure you to instantly meet up or give them your phone number right away and then imply you’re being overly cautious when you don’t comply. Women are not stupid for being cautious. We’ve seen what the internet has to offer. If you can’t be bothered to exchange a few messages prior to meeting and start employing coercive tactics you’re blocked.
GL says
Oh…and the “Send Me a Picture Guy,” (not the dirty kind). Why make demands so early? Sure, it’s endearing that you want a picture of me on your phone, but really? This one guy I thought was really cute wanted me to go and take a picture he hadn’t already seen. Feeling lazy, I asked him if he didn’t trust me or something. He said: “I just want to see a pic I haven’t seen.” OK….this tells me he hasn’t been doing online dating for very long, and honestly I felt a little objectified. I was so annoyed I had to go do something special for someone I never met, I instantly put him into the ‘self-centered’ category. I never sent a pic and he hasn’t talked to me since. LOL
Karmic Equation says
I just tell men the truth. “I hate having my picture taken. I only took mine as a necessity for online dating.”
To the men that I find very attractive, and have had a few text convos with, I’ll send them the best pic I have (which is already in my online profiles) – but which is very PG…of my very toned and tanned leg — and they NEVER complain. It’s very sexy but not remotely sexual.
To men that I find only marginally attractive who ask, I usually just disappear on them.
Julia says
I also don’t think I’ve interacted with a send me a pic guy either, maybe after 1-2 messages but I would just ignore.
Joe says
To be fair, a lot of people (M & F) doing OLD use old pics, which may or may not be an accurate representation of the way they look today. You’ve all heard of (or seen yourself) guys with pics from the 80s. I went out with a woman once who looked in her 20s in her pic but looked about 15 years older when we met in person, and in fact looked almost nothing like she did in her pic.
If someone asks you to send them a pic they haven’t seen before, it could be just trying to avoid a bait and switch.
Al says
Actually this makes sense. If I’m planning to meet a guy and something feels off to me I may ask him to send me a selfie doing something very specific (like putting a finger on his nose) so it can’t be an old picture he had saved from years ago. I got tricked one too many times by guys posting pictures from like the 80s on their profiles. They’ve even sent me selfies that were supposedly just taken that turned out to be 50 lbs and 15 years ago, hence the specific pose I ask for. In fact, ALL of the ones I did this with looked very different in the photos they sent me, probably because my spidey senses were picking up on something dishonest about them already. I didn’t end up meeting them. Its a way to weed out the dishonest ones. If a man refused to send me a current selfie I’d assume he had something to hide and wouldn’t talk to him again either.
GL says
I am going to layout a general timeline it takes to see what kind of person you are dealing with:
Sleazebags/Casual Sex Seekers: Right away or within 2 or 3 email/texting (NOT sexting) sessions, they bring up their genitals, send you a picture of it, and ask for a shot of yours.
The Lonely Guy: several interactions, it builds up
Send Me A Picture Guy (not sleazy, mostly harmless): happens right away
I Will Never Ask You To Get Together I Will Only Email/Instant Message Guy: Several emails will reveal this kind of guy, and they continue to say hi for weeks after you stopped talking to them. 🙁 (I feel bad for them)
The Insecure Narcissist Asshole: 1st date, sometimes interactions leading up to the 1st date, in which case I recommend just not dealing with them at all.
Normal Guys: Pretty instantly, don’t do anything weird, the 1st date is casual, pressure free.
Then of course there is when the relationship/personalities reveal themselves over time, that’s a different story.
Amy says
@GL: Yup, met all those losers. I really can’t stand the “I will never date you, just want you as a texting/email buddy”. Sorry, I have a life and time is precious to me. I can sniff out these guys very quickly and I block. Glad I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
Noquay says
Dina
I am a fifty something distance runner, tallish, with a wiry, muscular build. My profile pics clearly show who I am and run the gamut from being dressed to
the nines to running a trail marathon, liberally
splattered with mud wearing a 2014 race number. No
deception. I am up ffront about profession, education level, politics, that I live at elevation, that I am also a farmer. Communicating with me will reveal I teach
medical subjects and have been the sole caretaker
of a parent suffering from the long term effects of
alcoholism and obesity. It seems as though guys deliberately self sabotage by holding the women
they desire to a standard far above the one they themselves live by and by blatant lying.
Maybe these dudes are desperate and are grasping at anyone and everyone.
We all need to be the person we want to attract. If
you want a chick who is in shape, presents herself well, can afford to drive long distances for dates, go
out to good restaurants/events, keeps a nice, well maintained home, is caring/polite/articulate/kind/well read, YOU
too must be these things. If a woman drives 100 miles to meet you, you’d better have some resemblance to
your photos, if you proposed a hike for a first meeting, you’d better be in shape to actually do so.
Making racist/anti higher ed remarks to a female proff of color ain’t a good idea, just sayin. Having opinions is fine but know your audience. Older dudes with huge
bellies, poor hygiene, no/under employment think they are somehow entitled to the best chick they can find. Turn em down and you’re a snob/entitled/elitist b@#$%. Never mind that the rship would have zero chance of success. I have, for now, given up on
on line after being on a number of sites. Cannot afford the time/huge amount of driving just to meet guys who are dishonest about who they are. Focussing my energies on visitors to the region that may be interested in living here.
I really wasn’t being rejected, I was being constantly contacted by folk who obviously failed to read my profile. Pro-actively looking to see what men existed in my age range (50-75) revealed very few that seemed a good match. They weren’t contacting me cause they
ain’t there, period. Very few on line guys are bad (those you report, then block), more like somewhat unrealistic. I too get really riled by dudes saying they want a LTR as do I, but really want a shag.
Men do this and I’ve become really good at sussing this out. If I am not interested, nope, I do not reply. No response is considered OK, and I don’t wanna hurt some poor dudes feelings. I kept expectations low, did not emotionally invest too soon so no matter.
I think on line works best for conventionally attractive mainstream folk and that’s it. Good looking, living in a city/suburb, average education level/lifestyle/goals and unfortunately, White. We older chix are not out to slam men; however, at this point in life, we know what does and does not work for us and nope, we do not wanna waste time/money meeting someone in a situation doomed to fail. Evan has stated that we all generally do best with equals, not carbon copies of one but someone who shares core values/lifestyle. Motorcycle lovers do best with chix who love to ride. Folks who are sedentary want someone on the couch next to them. Family oriented folk do best with family-orienteds. Active folks do best with active partners. It’s all good.
Dina Strange says
You should NOT be driving to meet a guy. He should be driving to meet you.
Noquay says
You’re right Dina, but when we are talking 100 miles one way, it’s fair to meet em half way the first time round. Also, since as a triracial, I am easily recognizable and it’s a small town, AND I live in a weird looking house high on a hill, it is waaay to easy for a problem child to find where I live, work, etc. Had a creepy feeling about one dude last year, was glad we met far from my home. Another drove here, asked the waitperson about me and got excellent directions to my house before even meeting me.
Good thing to be on the safe side at first. Was cyber stalked by a dude I never communicated with on two dating sites and he easily found out where I worked, then my work email and phone from our website. Creepy.
AnonFemaleOnlineDater says
Exactly!
Joe says
Wanting an LTR, and wanting a shag are not mutually exclusive.
Tatiayna says
Online dating is seriously detrimental to your emotional health. The fact that men don’t read profiles and send emails to women they have zero in common with, in any way. Is the number 1 reason , online dating is such a failure..
Evan Marc Katz says
If online dating is such a failure, how come 20-30% of all marriages are now beginning online?
wade says
Next time you drive by a university, go park in the visitor parking area, and take a stroll into one of the classroom hall ways. Everybody has their face glued to a smart phone, and is not talking to the person beside them. They very nearly ignore the person beside them even if they are talking.
That many marriages are starting online, because people are living in a fantasy world.
This computer is a fantasy world that is unhealthy to me, as it replaces normal activity.
Divorce rates are about the same as ever, so OLD isn’t “helping” anything.
If you can’t respond to someone’s best, which is what they are putting in their profile, then you aren’t going to respond to them in real life, where all their flaws are known.
they say they want honesty. They do not.
They want a fantasy that no guy can live up to. They want a guy to somehow have the “virtues” of a 33 years old virgin, but the experiences of a 33 years old player, but they’ll date neither individually…at least not until they get very desperate, or until your income eclipses about the 75k to 100k mark. Then they’ll date you even if they are otherwise not interested in you at all. Girl in Texas on a certain site told me she’d date me…if I made more money. She already made more than the national household average, and she’s complaining about money.
It’s fake.
Sex would be nice and everything, I’m sure, but a relationship with that person would suck. I say that as a person who wants marriage and a child or two. It would suck to be in a relationship with most of the women on online dating sites.
They are:
Uneducated, even the ones with degrees are generally less educated than me, and I don’t have a degree. I’m going back to college now; anxiety doesn’t help a 17 year old pass an Engineering program at a major university, so 16 years later, literally another life time, I’m back trying it again, and I’m literally no different now than then, except I’m on anxiety and depression medications. Haven’t had a date in my life. I guess the only good thing in all this is I’m passing my classes, but if I don’t write that damned English paper by the morning I’m going to lose 5% of my grade. No big deal, this post is bigger than that paper has to be, so it’s not like it’s hard or anything.
Several years ago this woman, “Vicky” (real name btw) told me to stop making generalizations. I tried to take her advice, but try as I might, I found out the generalizations were generally right. The more I tried not to generalize about women, the more I realized they were almost always right anyway.
Back then, it was one of these 20-something on 20-something discussions and her position was basically, “i wouldn’t date you but somebody might” kind of thing.
Any negative condition you might find yourself in is like that. Nobody “gets it” and they really can’t help you, unless they’ve actually been there themself.
What does a person who’s been married for their entire life know about advising a person who’s the same age and never had a date?
Nothing, that’s what. They married their high school sweetheart, because for whatever reason they developed a relationship with a person very early on in life, and they’ve no Idea on earth what it’s like to be someone like me. Yet they think they have some insight, and ironically they’ve only ever dated one person, and it worked out on the first try. They really don’t even know anything themselves, because the person they are with liked them from the start on the first try. I saw those relationships. I can go to my facebook page and pull up about 50 “friends” who are like that. It’s as if it just fell in their lap.
Not exactly, but you get the point. I know a guy my age who’s been married since he was 19, and has been pastoring a church, and it’s like “really?” Does this guy know anything at all abotu being a single adult?
Answer? No. he’s been married since he graduated high school, but he’s “pastoring” people who have life experiences that he is completely ignorant of.
And on the other hand, you have the catholic church, where priests are sworn to celibacy (please God no) and they are advising married couples. What the hell is this?
this is the insane world I live in, and I wonder why nothing works.
If there’s a woman on here who actually understands what I’m talking about, and doesn’t think I’m a complete jerk at this point, hey, I’d like to chat, because maybe you see what I see.
That whole “Pastoral counsel” situation is not amusing to me. It’s insane and it’s out of order.
As a Christian I’m supposed to marry a Christian, but I don’t want a Christian, because Christians don’t know what love is. They only have fantasies and religion.
I figured if I gave some of those “less desirables” a chance, and I really loved her, if she’d respond anyway, hey, that’s better than the fake BS mainstream Christianity does with relationships.
I used to be “marriage before sex” belief.
I don’t believe that any more. It’s stupid. It hurt me by making me less and less what women want anyway.
You don’t want that.
I thought I was supposed to be that, because that’s what Christianity is all about in terms of natural, earthly living, but it’s not at all what’s practical or realistic, and it’s hurtful.
I had an older cousin who joked at me one time, long time ago, something like, “you wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive…” In response to sex and marriage.
I looked down on that remark for a long time, but he was right.
It might be against what the church teaches, and it might even be against what the Bible itself says, but he was right. It’s actually more loving too, when you think about it.
“True love waits” thing, I mentioned.
I believed that. I lived that. I lived it more closely and correctly than the people preaching it.
It was a false doctrine, which destroyed my life.
Is that what women want to hear?
When you “good” christian, try to justify your desires and such, you claim you want(ed) that, but you don’t want the person it produced.
Hey, I’m not the hypocrite, because I actually did want what it was supposed to produce in a woman, or so I thought.
But it’s a lie. You believe it because it sounds so good, but then half a life time later when you realize it hasn’t lead to anything except lonliness (a trait women also don’t want) then you realize you’re screwed, and not in a good way.
You don’t want loneliness.
Hey 33 yr old virgin can’t help but be lonely.
All my guy friends are either married, dead, or moved to another state, so I rarely, if ever, get to be around anyone.
You don’t want “neediness”, but what the hell does that mean anyway? I don’t even know exactly what you mean by that in the context of dating, because I can’t help but want sex, even though I never get it, but you put me in an impossible situation where no matter what I try I cannot be what you claim you want. If you were stranded in the middle of nowhere long enough, you’d start to need things too, and what? If I walk by and you ask for help, should I say, “wow. You needy thing, I don’t want anything to do with you.”
Great. who’s wronging who here?
You don’t want “clingy”.
I don’t even know what you mean by that. Never had a real date, so what the hell do I know about whatever boundaries you consider “clingy”? Nothing. I wouldn’t know if I was breaking your boundary or not, because I’ve never been there with anyone, much less you, but you’ll hold it against me either way.
Guess what? Television romances are fake. The irony is women watch shows like soap operas and formerly Sex and the City, and the primary content of the show is everything the same women claim they don’t want to deal with, one player cheating with another’s wife, or ex, or whoever, Thsi one has amnesia and can’t remember who she was screwing last week, and that one has secretly the other guys baby…but they continually fill their head with it every day…
…but it’s the guy’s fault, right?
If I can find a woman who’ll admit how absolutely screwed up and hypocritical those standards are, then I’ll have some sort of common ground.
Traveller says
@Evan:
I’m HIGHLY suspicious of that figure. According to another OKCupid study, (using figures released by eHarmony and Match.com, as well as their own) it’s actually more like about 6 to 7% – the online dating companies have a large incentive to inflate their figures to make themselves look better.
Evan Marc Katz says
Yeah, and I’m highly suspicious of any person who questions a study because it contradicts what he wants to believe.
http://web.archive.org/web/20160808090109/http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/06/03/study-a-third-of-new-marriages-began-with-online-meetings
You are Exhibit A for Confirmation Bias – you look for all sorts of things to validate your opinions, even when they’re false. But your opinions aren’t facts. Fact: You have a better chance with women your own age than women 10 years younger. Fact: online dating is huge and successful. You just want excuses to justify your worldview. Sorry. My facts beat your feelings.
Traveller says
@Evan:
Even, you’re very fond of accusing others of what you do yourself. Take “confirmation bias”. You run a service promoting online dating, so of course you want to find things that would encourage the view that that’s a good thing.
I hadn’t seen this study, but using the link you offered (thank you) I note that the study was done by eHarmony themselves. A more biased source I can hardly imagine.
Your opinions aren’t facts, either. If you want to play dueling studies, I can dig up the OKCupid study, which flat-out contradicts this one. All that that proves is that the issue is in question.
I’m more concerned about your tone, which is decidedly snotty, and not like you. I questioned the study because I had seen prior evidence to the contrary, not because I personally care one way or the other. I hope our discussion earlier didn’t get too heated, to the point where you’re taking things personally. If I offended you, then I apologize, and will try to tread more lightly in the future. Have a good night!
Evan Marc Katz says
“Harris Interactive was commissioned by eHarmony.com to perform a nationally representative survey of individuals in America married between 2005 and 2012. Harris Interactive was not involved in data analyses…To ensure the integrity of the data and analyses and in accordance with procedures specified by JAMA, independent statisticians oversaw and verified the statistical analyses based on a prespecified plan for data analyses. In addition, an agreement with eHarmony was reached prior to the analyses of the data to ensure that any results bearing on eHarmony.com would not affect the publication of the study. The materials and methods used (including the Harris Survey, Codebook, and Datafile) are provided in the Appendix S1, Appendix S2, and Dataset S1 to ensure transparency and objectivity.”
And you’re right. I am being snotty. It’s unbecoming. But I gotta admit: I get very tired of people asserting that their feelings override facts, and very tired of conspiracy theorists who don’t trust anything that contradicts their own narrative.
I don’t believe in online dating because I have an online dating profile writing site. I believe in online dating because online dating works. Your logic would suggest that one should stop going to the gym because there are still a lot of fat people.
So while you can suggest that you’re the objective one here and I’m the emotional one, I think it’s simply hard for you to admit that online dating is an extremely popular vehicle that helps strangers meet. It’s not brilliant about matching or compatibility. It simply does what the internet does: make the world smaller and give people a chance to connect who would never meet in real life. No amount of bars, parties, churches, and social networking can reach as many folks instantly as an online dating site. This is why it’s so popular. This is why I’ve tried it, my wife has tried it, my sister met her husband on Nerve.com, my oldest girl friend met her husband on eHarmony, my wife’s best friend met her husband on Match and hundreds of my clients have also found love online, including an engagement I just heard about on Valentine’s Day.
So forgive me if I’m a bit dismissive of the “online dating sucks, the opposite sex is unfair” crowd. I’ve been battling women who say the same thing for years, and you just happened to tee yourself up as the latest victim who believes that the world is conspiring against them, as opposed to the following: you can have better photos, you can have a better profile, you can write better emails, you can reach out to more appropriate women, you can rid yourself of this sheen of victimhood and negativity, and so on.
Much easier to change yourself than it is to change Match, women or the Pacific Northwest, dontcha think?
Traveller says
@Evan:
Yeah, I saw that disclaimer. It’s pretty much meaningless. Studies get published all the time like that, and later get discredited because they used a poor sampling method, or the interpretation of the results wasn’t justified by the way the data was acquired, or a dozen other reasons.
You’re consistently misinterpreting my motivations, Evan. This issue has NOTHING to do with my feelings, and everything to do with yours. I have no feelings either one way or the other about online dating sites in general; I neither love them nor dislike them. I’ve used them and my conclusion is that they are beneficial for a small number of people, and not terribly so for most. But that’s merely an opinion, and it’s not worth getting mad over an opinion.
My logic is that gyms work great for those who have the time, money, dedication and ability to get to them easily. For most of the rest, not so much. But again, that’s my opinion, and frankly, I doubt that any gym operators care much about my opinion. 😉
I would agree with you completely that online dating is popular. Extraordinarily popular. So popular, in fact, that it even attracts people who aren’t well served by online dating. That’s not a criticism of the venue, just a note that not everyone does equally well in all situations.
I’m really amused at your attempts to paint me with various brushes – unconfident, negative, a victim, etc. I’m none of those things, and I certainly don’t buy into conspiracy theories. (I know all too well how hard it is for even two people to keep a secret, let alone any larger ‘conspiracy’!)
Look, I understand you feel attacked, and I didn’t mean that. Come on, let’s drop it and stop arguing. I think you’re a good guy, and I admire your efforts and the fact that you’ve built an excellent business, and I’d like to be friends. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I’ll try to be more diplomatic in the future. Deal?
By the way, my name is Michael. Nice to meet you!
Evan Marc Katz says
Michael, you’re a good guy. You’ve been diplomatic. I haven’t. I just firmly disagree with your assertion, and, like any disagreement, feel that I have the facts on my side. Sorry I wasn’t more respectful in my comments.
Blondie99 says
True but how many end in divorce? I am pretty sure there was a study that came out recently saying that the number was much higher for people that meet online.
Wade says
I read every profile, the ones that actually contain anything.
Most of them do not contain anything except a canned soup statement.
I try to only write to women I have at least a few things in common with, but quite honestly there are very, very, very few women who have anything in common with me.
the number 1 reason, in my experience, that online dating is such a failure is:
I spend 30 minutes to an hour preparing my first post to a woman, and she doesn’t give a damn and doesn’t respond.
You’re clueless girl.
Seriously, you think GUYS are at fault for this?
In my case, having certain types of things in common with a woman is simply not possible, because I have been single my entire life and don’t have those experiences.
If I put that I’m a 33 year old virgin in my profile, and I know, most of you have no interest in that.
If I do not put that, you’re going to find out anyway, because hey, let’s face it, I’ve never done anything. Then I’ll be accused of “lying” or something similar, when it becomes obvious.
So I lose either way.
But you just go right ahead blaming guys for “not reading” profiles.
You know what, I doubt the avg 4 paragraph first message I send to women ever gets read. They probably just trash it, along with the crap from the jerks you’re talking about.
Thanks for the waste of time, little girl.
EmeraldDust says
Wade said ”
If I put that I’m a 33 year old virgin in my profile, and I know, most of you have no interest in that.
If I do not put that, you’re going to find out anyway, because hey, let’s face it, I’ve never done anything. Then I’ll be accused of “lying” or something similar, when it becomes obvious.
Wade, no one expects you to put “virgin” in your profile, any more than someone would be expected to put their “number” in their profile. (“number” meaning number of initimate partners) No one will accuse of “lying” for not putting your sexual history in your profile.
I used to respond to everyone who wrote to me, even if it was just to say, “Thanks for reaching out, but I don’t think we are a match”. If there was a non-offensive reason such as too far away, too young, or a smoker, I would say so, but I was getting arguments. So now, I just generally don’t answer the ones I’m not interested in. I also have some men write to me every few hours while I am at work or asleep, and start to demand a reason why I haven’t written to them. Sometimes it takes me a couple of days to a week to respond to the ones I WANT to respond to due to work, other commitments, and yes, I am usually writing to a few at a time.
I know it must be hard for men, who have to do most of the initiating online, to get no response, but if I were to compare the number of views my profile gets compared to the number of e-mails I get, the ratio is pretty dismal.
Men and women both get rejected. The form the rejection takes might differ due to the general roles of men as pursuers and women as the responders. Men get rejected when someone doesn’t respond to their pursuit. Women get rejected when a man she sent “you may approach me” signals to, doesn’t respond.
Wade says
Emerald Dust:
I used to attend church very regularly, and mostly the only thing it did was produce an unhealthy attitude which isolated me more from normal people.
Around 10 years ago, I was a member of a 1500member congregation, and not one woman in the entire place ever initiated conversation with me, because “regularly church attending” Christian women are definitely even worse about this sort of thing than average women. They absolutely demand that the guy do everything, and they absolutely demand that the guy Work all day long while she keeps house, because for some ungodly reason, that’s what “Pastors” teach young women they’re supposed to do, but any guy who’s read Proverbs would know that’s about the exact opposite of what it says for a “prudent woman”.
At this time, I was not yet diagnosed with the social anxiety, though I had it my entire life. I tried and tried to meet people and make friends, and never got beyond this circle of 4, and the 2 girls in that circle got married to the 2 guys, and I was left alone, and then one day these idiots attacked me over something irrelevant involving my father’s death, and I left the church. I visited a few times after that, and said good riddance afterwards.
I stood in the first couple’s wedding for God’s sake, and I had been permanently “friend zoned” by the other girl, who I was really interested in.
Basically, the entire experience was a gigantic waste of a couple years of my life, as there came a point where the only reason I was attending any more as for them, and then when that argument happened, I was out.
They had the audacity to claim that my dad died early because there was some kind fo “sin” in his life.
Seriously. Christians.
One of my uncles was like, “whoever said that doesn’t know anything about Christianity”.
There were four little wolves that I spent my time trying to be good to, because they seemed on the surface to be so nice and “perfect”.
Evil.
Very Evil “Christians”.
Gotta love ’em though, they’re “preaching everybody else into heaven,” and they’re on their way to hell.
But I have it right, friend.
Jesus said the Harlots and publicans enter into the Kingdom of Heaven before you. The Christians well know that verse, and yet they are worse for the wear.
If you want to see a devil, go to church and talk to the pastor. “The Gospel can only go as far as a dollar bill can carry it,” he says. – I’ll leave that one anonymous.
Mission accomplished.
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, found out Church is about the worst place on Earth for two “Christians” to meet.
I was there 5 days per week. I volunteered. I was, at one time, close to some pretty important people, and I confess that half the reason I was there was just as an excuse to be around this one girl. She was clueless though, and I was suffering from that anxiety problem and could never get over that approach anxiety thing to talk to her the way I’d like to, so it stayed “friend/acquaintance” zone for 2 years.
In hind-sight, it’s a good thing I guess. I mean, given what happened in the end.
Oh yeah, on the PUA thing, I’ve already tried that. I actually bought two different guy’s systems, trying to get help any way I could. It doesn’t help me because first of all, about half of it is actually illegal for one reason or another in the U.S. If a guy does that to a woman and she likes it, great. If he does it and she doesn’t like it, he gets a sexual harassment charge against him, or groping or inappropriate touching.
Secondly I’m not good enough at conversation in person to even attempt to do the things he’s talking about. He makes it sound easy to go to the book store or coffee shop and get 10 women’s numbers in a day, and invite them to a club or whatever, and I’ve never gotten 5 women’s numbers in my life
I can’t help but laugh at myself.
He’s doing this to manipulate people’s perceptions. He doesn’t care two whits about most of the girls he’s talking to. You know this and I know this, and the women on this blog would be disgusted if they saw how this works. He’s just getting a bunch of women in the club so he can suck up to the owner, then use his influence with the owner to suck up to someone else (a rich mark) which he uses the other guys money to attract one other girl he’s actually interested in so he can go sleep with her one time.
That’s like everything that disgusts me…
The other guy claims to be teaching a method of identifying what type a woman is in certain categories, which he’s using to try to predict certain things she’s likely to want/like or dislike, and so forth. Additonally physical escalation, which is very subtle manipulation of women’s physical, pscyhological barriers to touch, and if you read what he is describing, he is practically in the act fo raping a woman before she even knows it, assuming it works, she doesn’t even realize she’s having sex until she’s already having sex. Consent is never an issue, as she’s effectively being manipulated and hypnotized without conscious knowledge.
Basically, it’s rape, and if the woman filed charges, she could potentially win.
It’s basically a form of hypnosis or manipulation, which is exactly wht I don’t want to be. I quit reading his guide because of it. I can’t stand manipulating people like that.
Take your typical “Christian” woman, and I mean a real believer. He would classify her “212” in his system (I’m not breaking his rules or revealing anything). His advice and dating strategy is literally to try to sleep with her as early as possible, preferably first date, because he knows that a Christian woman, is trying to live up to certain standards.
His strategy then is to “break her”, so she is stuck with him psychologically, and he uses a subtle mind trick to do this to her over a period of 30 minutes to an hour, which I’ve seen the physical parts of what he was talking about, but I didn’t yet pay for the rest of it. Then he’s like, “She’ll be a great girlfriend if you can get this to work.” Oh really. Let’s just do exactly what she’s taught not to do with herself. Make a complete freaking mockery of everything we both believe in along the way too.
Hey, maybe that’s what everyone else does anyway, and I’m just the idiot in the dark. Right?
I didn’t get to some other parts yet, because he charges quite a lot of money for this, even if you do his cheap versions. He claims there are “code words” you can drop into a conversation which will instantly make a woman want to have sex with you, even if she doesn’t like you.
Maybe I should get that part. If it works, no harm done I guess, because I don’t intend to use that to hurt anybody, but there is harm done, because I don’t want manipulation.
I wanted “love”, but I’m learning that “love” is a lie. “Love” doesn’t work on dating sites, and it doesn’t work in real life. Maybe the guy is right. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about the fact that he presents evidence and 800 interviews with women of all types who when put to the question admit they actually want what he’s doing, even if they wouldn’t admit it otherwise.
but you can actually go to PRISON for doing some of this stuff, even with good intentions.
But he proved they want it that way.
Go figure.
So the PUA advice is exactly what every Christian woman, or pretty much every woman, says they do not want, but he claims it works and it’s exactly what they want, and he gets it to work all the time, and so many of his group makes it work, and he had 800 individual documented interviews with women to prove it.
If he’s telling the truth, then the lot of you on this thread are complete liars, and dating site women are all frauds, and the whole lot of everything I’ve ever thought I was doing to help myself was a waste.
Look, that’s talking like step 20 anyway, and I can’t even get to step 2.
My God, I don’t even know why I’m writing this any more. Every once in a while I end up on a blog complaining about how screwed up dating sites are, and also asking for a little, or a lot, of help in fixing myself.
It’s not like there’s “fix a 33 year old virgin” classes at the local college or gym,you know.
I don’t know what else to say.
There’s several women I’ve written that God is my witness I’d die for. They seemed on their profile to be exactly what I needed, and they don’t know I exist. I’ve tried talking to every type of girl from “she’s really not what I’m interested in, but I’ll write her anyway,” to mildly attractive and seems to have interesting hobbies and such, to you know there’s the “one” that when you open the first page of a new search immediately catches your eye, and you know she’s not going to respond, but you write her anyway, because she’s the one you’re really interested in.
Tried all that, and everything between.
It’s disgusting to think that in a few cases I’ve actually had men, and even WOMEN, tell me I should lie in my profile.
The younger woman tells me to “go older”.
The older woman doesn’t want a 33 years old virgin.
I do actually want a child or two some day, and “older” at this point is already getting out of the fertility range in some cases.
My psychologist tells me I’m “normal”. That’ it is “normal” for people to have a hard time conversing.
I call BS, because I’m currently attending a university. I see thousands of people around me talk to one another effortlessly. They laugh, they joke, they flirt with the girl, whatever. Me? I can be in an entire room and it’s like climbing up a muddy, steep bank of a river, with no hand-hold, to even get “Hello” to come out of my mouth, much less anything else.
I told him that, I’ve told other people that, and it doesn’t get through their head that what I experience is far beyond normal “approach anxiety”.
Church?
I had a heart attack the first time I tried to introduce myself to a certain girl there. I mean heart attack, as in chest pain that stopped me dead in my tracks and brought tears, and scared the living hell out of me ten times worse than the original anxiety.
As a Christian, for a while, I thought it was something “spiritual” that you could pray about or believe away.
I used to go to the idiot pastor for help a time or two with this problem, and all they could say was pray harder, or some stupidity.
Finally, a couple years ago, after a family member committed suicide, my sister was worried about me, so she insisted I go to a psychologist/psychiatrist, and that’s when they said I have severe generalized anxiety, severe social anxiety, primary depression.
Going back to how bad the anxiety really is, I told my psychologist this stuff, and they don’t get it. I’m not exaggerating. He’s a good counselor and whatever, he’s simply never encountered someone with as big of a problem as I have, and it’s obvious to me, because his responses, his reactions to my descriptions of how hard this is, make it evident that he’s never dealt with anyone this closed off.
Now of course, it’s a vicious cycle, and I know it, because it’s not just about me, it’s about the women too.
They really don’t want a 33 yrs old virgin. Even if I could get over the anxiety and such, which I’m on a cocktail of meds for, they reject me anyway.
I’ve tried talking to the girls at college, which I’m back attending at this age, and I’m surround by 19 to 25 yrs old girls, and they aren’t interested in a 33yrs old either, besides, I still have the same problem trying to talk to a 19 to 25 years old girl now as I did when I was 19 to 25 years old. Nothing’s changed, except now I’m less desirable than before, because I’m expected to be 10 years more successful or experienced in dating, and I’m not.
I’ve watched my life just disappear like a piece of burning garbage, and I can’t even get a break from somebody on a dating site, where I thought it would be easier to introduce myself, and maybe some nice woman would like to meet, and the anxiety problem wouldn’t happen….
And not one person has ever given me a chance.
So what is supposed to be some form of help in finding someone or communicating is nothing more than another bondage to me.
Wade says
The topic comes up, and it’s the truth. I don’t put it in every profile, but I have put it in there at times just to see how people responded, but the the difference between no responses and no responses is um….nothing.
Look, here’s some other stuff about me.
I don’t worship my car or 4-wheeler like other guys.
I don’t watch NASCAR or rodeo. I think they are wasteful and stupid, and I don’t consider NASCAR a sport at all.
I don’t go mud riding (I own a car) and I wouldn’t go mud riding if I had a truck.
I don’t go to bars or clubs, because the places are horribly noisy. It’s bad enough to have anxiety, but worse when you try to talk to somebody and the damn music is so loud you can’t even hear their response, and I don’t like the types of music they play anyway. So it’s misery to me.
I drank my first beer about 6 months ago, and realized I wasn’t missing anything, and can’t imagine why anyone would actually want to drink that. I don’t mean like the stupid movie “guy gags on his first drink” thing (It’s not like that). I mean it tastes like garbage. I can taste every element, wood, plastic, metal, rotten grain, everything, and it’s repulsive.
Pathophysiology and anatomy course? Hmmm I got a higher score on both the male and the female anatomy than the women in my class, and they have kids, and I’m the single, never dated guy. Broke the curve I guess, so they threw my grade out. Books =/= life.
Oh yeah, I don’t know what a “You may approach me” signal would be IRL. The few times I thought I was getting that, and tried to act on it somehow, I was clearly wrong. Never dated honey. I don’t know what you expect from me in terms of signals or body language or anything liek that. I just do not get that, unless it’s something just completely obvious like turning away or something, or verbal.
If women’s views and expectations on dating behavior, or body language, etc, were in a large collection of books, and yours is a particular volume, let’s say it has your screen name, “Emerald Dust”. I never get to “read” any of hte books anyway, so I don’t know the language you speak beyond baby level literally, because I’ve never had the opportunity (at least since my deliverance from the stupidity of the first 2/3rds of my life).
Now you expect me to know what your body language means: Yes, you can come talk to me, no get the hell away, gee I’d like you to come closer, whatever it may be. I don’t get it usually. I’m quite often drawing the opposite conclusion of what you want. I don’t see those nuances, and I don’t have “girl friends” to help me understand how to get a “girlfriend” either.
My inner thoughts are often clouded by alternative physics models, contemplation on how to explain mechanisms of the origin of the universe, memorizing Pi to 20 decimal places, nanotechnology and medicine, copper films on all surfaces kill MRSA and VRSA for pennies on the dollar compared to antibiotics, but hospitals don’t use it because they actually want old people to die and get off medical programs, installing X number of money worth of solar power plants can pay off the Federal Debt in Y years and multiply the value of assets ten fold in the process, two orbiting objects have a larger sphere of gravitational influence than the same mass would have were it concentrated in one object at their barycenter, in a particular Real Time Strategy game, a certain race is over powered because they get ahead by 2 workers and a 100 resources within the first 3 minutes, and their economy is always stronger thereafter; Free will favors evil because “good” can only react. Preemption can’t stop evil because evil adapts faster. Murders can’t be prevented within the framework of our legal system, and they can’t be undone, they can only clean up the mess, The good guys always lose, regardless of what the score card says. Cain murdered Abel, and God didn’t lift a finger to help, he just watched it happen. A modern, “sinful” police officer would have stopped it had he been on the scene, Most random drunks would have tried to stop it had they been on the scene, but the “righteous, loving God” did absolutely nothing, and I don’t have an objective argument for how that can possibly be morally acceptable that an omnipotent being alleges to be “Love”, but stands by and watches a pointless murder and does nothing to help. So God did not protect Abel’s “good” free will, but he did protect Cain’s “evil” free will. And the same pattern has been repeated in the real world, over and over, whether or not the bible story is based on a true story.
Understand?
The lesson is, if you were doing something wrong, God would not step in and help, whether or not you wanted correction. If you were making a life decision that would hurt you or your children, whether or not you know it, or if you were accidentally hurting yourself or someone else, whether or not you know it, God doesn’t step in and correct you, even if it accidentally wrecks someone, even if someone ends up getting killed over it.
There is no freedom in that. There is only evil.
All of that and much more are things I think about all the time. Pretty well go in cycles on the moral and cosmological arguments.
Dating is a matter of free will Hawking says, “is everything determined? yes, but it may as well not be, because you can’t tell the difference.” For example, you look both ways before crossing the street, even though you are either going to get hit, or not. If you don’t look both ways and you get hit, it’s your fault. on the other hand, if you look both ways and nothing’s coming, then looking was a waste of time, but it can’t be helped anyway.
So anyway, if dating is a matter of free will, then since free will favors evil, which we can prove quite easily that it does, then it is impossible to love someone without inherently doing evil, ether directly or indirectly.
Example:
When you love one person, you remove yourself from other people to spend time with them. Those other people “need” someone, and maybe they needed something you had to give and didn’t realize it, and now you didn’t “do” anything “wrong”, but you weren’t there to do something “right” that was needed either. That person suffers for x number of years because they didn’t hear something they needed to hear at the right time to be encouraged, or make the right decision, or date the right person, or whatever.
Somewhere in there are thoughts of that girl I like, or used to like, but never am where I’d like to be to date, or the one online who I’d like to talk to but won’t respond. Somewhere in there is a hope and a prayer of something resembling normalcy.
When I lay down at night, all I feel is alone, and because I have nobody except myself and God, that’s all there is. If you don’t feel the lack of a mate any other time, I can guarantee you feel it when you lay down alone every night. So used to being alone that you don’t even really comprehend what it is not to be alone, even though you hope for it.
I direct my thoughts to contemplative prayer, or just prayer in general, about being healed from the misery and loneliness, and someday being in some sort of loving relationship with a woman. I don’t know what that will look like, because I’m so far from “normal” that expecting a “normal” relationship is unreasonable at best.
the woman in the photo is real, but the profile is a character someone made up. It may have been made by the woman in the photo, or by someone else, but it isn’t real.
Adam says
As a person who used to be an older, compared to my peers, kiss-less virgin, I understand where you are coming from, but there comes a point where we all need to just accept the way women are and get over this.
Once we accept women as they are, we know what behavior we need to adopt in order to attract women. Women are not turned on by nice guys. Nice guys finish last. Being nice and respectful doesn’t attract women. Religious men are mostly unattractive. Men who are close to their mothers are not sexy. Women like men who have slept with tons of other women. The more sex partners a man has had (within reason) the more attractive he is to other women. Women like guys who are already in relationships. We need to accept these facts. Don’t be angry at women for being this way. This is just the way they are. It is just like a woman being angry at men for liking women like Kim Kardashian or Pamela Anderson and not being attracted to obese 400 pound women. We are attracted to who we are attracted to. Women are attracted to who they are attracted to. There is nothing to be angry about. This is just the way men are. Women should accept this, just like men need to accept what attracts women.
I have a lot of respect for Evan, and I admire what he has built in terms of this blog and his business, but with all due respect, men like him, who have dated hundreds of women, have absolutely no idea what it is like to deeply struggle with attracting women. To be an older kiss-less virgin. No clue. This can lead to misconceptions and miscommunication on both sides. It is essentially a communications breakdown. On that note, I don’t think that you are going to be a mass murderer, but I do think you are a deeply frustrated person, which I can understand. Therapists and psychiatrists are a complete waste of time, when it comes to these things, because what are they going to tell you that you don’t already know — nothing. So why waste your time and money.
What I would do if I were you, is go to meetup.com and find some groups devoted to picking up women. I would join a few of these groups. In addition to studying this blog, I would also study pickup artists like Bobby Rio and Alan Roger Currie. Start approaching women, at least one or two every day to start and build up from there to the point where you are approaching several a day. As to the older male virgin thing, it is a mistake to ever mention this to a woman even if asked directly. This is ALWAYS a MISTAKE. ALWAYS. You get it? All women, including “good” Christian women are DEEPLY disgusted by virgins. ALL women. They are also turned off by guys who lost their virginity late in life. They all want the “stud” who has slept with tons of women, no matter WHAT THEY SAY. This is always the case. Women consider virgins and guys who are not virgins, but lost their virginity later in life super unattractive, so you need to lie about this if asked. No woman will EVER understand your situation, so letting her know at any point is a complete waste of time. Letting her know will cause her to leave. So unless you want her to leave and you want to become a social pariah, don’t tell.
I had my first kiss and later lost my virginity after I started studying pickup. Instead of being honest and open, like I had been before, I LIED and DECEIVED the girl, and my problem was solved. What is funny about the whole scenario, besides the fact she never found out the truth, is one time, we were talking about sexual histories. I gave her a long imaginary sexual history that included dozens of partners. She went over her sexual history. She had NO idea at all that I lied to her. She never found out and she never noticed anything out of the ordinary when I kissed her, my first kiss or when we slept together for the first time and I lost my virginity to her. And she will never know.
So all is not lost. Study pickup. Lie about your sexual history, exhibit bad boy traits, attract women. Problem solved.
Evan Marc Katz says
I feel sorry for you but I don’t like letting bad ideas stand uncorrected.
“Nice guys finish last. Being nice and respectful doesn’t attract women. Religious men are mostly unattractive. Men who are close to their mothers are not sexy.”
No. I’m nice. I’m respectful. I’m not religious but a lot of my women clients want religious men. Almost ALL women want men who are close with their mothers and like women. You are making a grievous error in believing these things. You are also conflating two things, which is the source of all of your confusion. In other words, don’t tell me I don’t understand guys like you. I do. You don’t understand guys like ME.
I am a nice guy with BALLS. You are a nice guy without balls. You are the guy who is so insecure around women that you don’t carry yourself with confidence, you lose your cool, you bend over backwards to please her even when it doesn’t make you happy, etc. The reason she’s not attracted to you, therefore, is that you have no balls, no spine, no opinions. You figure you can “nice” your way into her heart.
MY point is that while assholes (such as the man you want to become) do better with women than YOU do, they DON’T do as well with women as I did. Because women DO want a man who is nice, respectful, a good listener, a man who calls and pays and prioritizes her. She just has to RESPECT him to be attracted to him. You shouldn’t be reading PUA books, Adam. You should pick up a copy of Dr. Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” to cure you of your pathology.
You’ve created a black and white world where women clamor for studs who treat them like shit. That’s a teenager’s world view. You think success comes from lying and studying pickup. In fact, the only women who put up with PUAs are women with low self esteem because women with HIGH self esteem want a man to be consistent and kind. So I’m glad you’re finally getting laid. Just know that when PUA’s mature, they turn into men like me. I’m telling you to skip a step and just act with confidence and personal power… and you’ll never have to lie or be a bad boy again.
SparklingEmerald says
Adam – I’m sorry you were a kissless virgin for so long and understand your frustration but . . .
I belong to meet up. I found some local “pick up” artist meet ups and bookmarked it. Then when I was doing OLD, if I found someone I was thinking of responding to, I would check that site for his pic. Not 100% foolproof, because not everyone puts a pic in their MU profile, or they put up a picture of a cartoon character or their goldfish. I never found a potential OLD date on a pick up site, but if I did, I would NOT go out to meet him, because I don’t want to play games.
Also, I don’t ask or tell when it comes to past partners. I don’t think women WANT promiscuous men, but they are willing to overlook it if a man has many past sexual partners. Whereas more men will hypocritically bang as many women as they want, and then look for a virgin or an almost virgin to settle down with.
My boyfriend is a good man. He is nice and respectful and I never held that against him. In fact, it is PRECISELY how he won my heart. He just wasn’t a no-balls nice guy, nor was he an arrogant PUA jerk in a purple fedora throwing his mother under the bus.
I’m glad neither one of us gave up on BEING OUR BEST SELVES. If he decided to act like a cocky jerk or if I decided to be some snooty games playing “Rules Girl” we wouldn’t be together.
Adam says
“No. I’m nice. I’m respectful. I’m not religious but a lot of my women clients want religious men. Almost ALL women want men who are close with their mothers and like women. You are making a grievous error in believing these things. You are also conflating two things, which is the source of all of your confusion. In other words, don’t tell me I don’t understand guys like you. I do. You don’t understand guys like ME.”
Well Evan, I certainly respect your point of view and your experience. I’m sure you have run into women that are like the ones you described. You are right, while I can try to understand where you are coming from, we fundamentally come from different places and have different experiences. I love women, but I am realistic. I understand that women are just fundamentally deeply turned off by the guy I used to be years and years ago. I am not angry about this, I accept it, just like women need to accept that men aren’t attracted to obese women. The obese woman needs to lose weight and the “nice guy” needs to change himself.
“I am a nice guy with BALLS. You are a nice guy without balls. You are the guy who is so insecure around women that you don’t carry yourself with confidence, you lose your cool, you bend over backwards to please her even when it doesn’t make you happy, etc. The reason she’s not attracted to you, therefore, is that you have no balls, no spine, no opinions. You figure you can “nice” your way into her heart.”
You are confusing me with other guys you have spoken to. I was always a nice guy. I listened to my female friends. I took advice from my family and female friends who always told me what a great catch I would make and what a great guy I was.
When I met my first serious girlfriend, I had just started studying PUA. One of the ideas that stuck with me from this study was pre-selection. I decided that, unlike the other girls I had dated before and who had dumped me rapidly when I was honest with them, I would apply this concept. Be the same person, but continually give the girl the idea I was popular with other women. This naturally involved deception since when I first met her, I was a kiss-less virgin. It worked spectacularly. I was hooked. We broke up years ago, but whenever I see her, I can see she is still attracted to me.
“MY point is that while assholes (such as the man you want to become) do better with women than YOU do, they DON’T do as well with women as I did. Because women DO want a man who is nice, respectful, a good listener, a man who calls and pays and prioritizes her. She just has to RESPECT him to be attracted to him. You shouldn’t be reading PUA books, Adam. You should pick up a copy of Dr. Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” to cure you of your pathology.”
Wow, now I have a “pathology.” Well, you have the right to believe whatever you want to believe. While you don’t appear to be understand my experience, I try to understand and respect your point of view while disagreeing with it. I have never found being a beta orbiter to be successful. Never. Embodying the traits that you outline above has never led to a woman becoming attracted to me. Of course, if she is ALREADY attracted to me, that is a different story. If she is in a relationship with me and we are together, of course the traits you describe, embody those of a good boyfriend. But the traits you describe in my experience, aren’t the primary ones that create attraction.
“You think success comes from lying and studying pickup. In fact, the only women who put up with PUAs are women with low self esteem because women with HIGH self esteem want a man to be consistent and kind. So I’m glad you’re finally getting laid. Just know that when PUA’s mature, they turn into men like me. I’m telling you to skip a step and just act with confidence and personal power… and you’ll never have to lie or be a bad boy again.”
I have never advocated physically mistreating women. But certainly I do advocate giving women the idea you are a player, in other words, you are a man that is successful with other women. This is key in attraction since women are attracted to men that other women are attracted to. With women, preselection is key. You need to give them the idea that other women consider you attractive. If this is not the case yet, because you are a virgin or relatively inexperienced, you need to deceive them and give them this idea. Fake it until you make it. There is certainly bad ideas in pickup as there are bad ideas in all subjects. But I have found that my success greatly increased after I started studying it, so I remain an advocate for it. Not every coach of course. Some of them are full of sh**. But some of them have good information.
What I find so funny, is women are always hiding things in their sexual history from men. Yet, when I advocate that men do the same, suddenly I am the bad guy. What I say is what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Learning to be a PUA and generate attraction is no different than a woman learning to dress and put on makeup in a way that makes her look far more attractive.
Evan Marc Katz says
And really, read No More Mr. Nice Guy. You’ll see that being a “beta orbiter” IS a pathology. Except the corrective is not to pretend to be a player or a jerk. It’s too stop putting women on a pedestal and start doing what you want. That doesn’t make you an asshole. It just makes you a normal, healthy man who doesn’t act like the 40-year-old virgin, despite his previous insecurities.
starthrower68 says
It would appear that Adam may be right in that the women HE wants maybe susceptible to PUA tactics. He probably has no interest in average girls who PUA’s wouldn’t give the time of day to.
Adam says
SparklingEmerald
“Adam — I’m sorry you were a kissless virgin for so long and understand your frustration but . . .”
Thank you. I appreciate this. Even though it was many years ago, I appreciate your compassion.
“I belong to meet up. I found some local “pick up” artist meet ups and bookmarked it. Then when I was doing OLD, if I found someone I was thinking of responding to, I would check that site for his pic. Not 100% foolproof, because not everyone puts a pic in their MU profile, or they put up a picture of a cartoon character or their goldfish. I never found a potential OLD date on a pick up site, but if I did, I would NOT go out to meet him, because I don’t want to play games.”
That is why I don’t put a profile picture on meetup. Too much trouble and too much judgement.
“Also, I don’t ask or tell when it comes to past partners. I don’t think women WANT promiscuous men, but they are willing to overlook it if a man has many past sexual partners. Whereas more men will hypocritically bang as many women as they want, and then look for a virgin or an almost virgin to settle down with.”
You make a great point. The situations are essentially reversed. It is good that you don’t ask about previous partners, but my experience has been that most women do. What I describe, being an older male virgin or having lost your virginity late is, the equivalent, in terms of attractiveness, to a woman who has slept with several hundred men. They are similar in terms of effect on the opposite sex. Men, don’t want to settle down and get married to women who are grossly promiscuous. Women get turned off by guys who are virgins or have only had a few partners. The reactions are similar even though both situations are opposite.
The problem with society, is society teaches these guys that they should be proud to be virgins and that one day a woman will accept this. Nothing could be further from the truth. This will never happen. No woman will ever accept these guys if they are honest. Pickup taught me this, and it was a key piece of information that helped me turn my life around. I’m happy about that.
“My boyfriend is a good man. He is nice and respectful and I never held that against him. In fact, it is PRECISELY how he won my heart. He just wasn’t a no-balls nice guy, nor was he an arrogant PUA jerk in a purple fedora throwing his mother under the bus.”
That’s nice. Too bad more women are not like you. I don’t have a purple fedora hat, but I do appreciate the tips from men like Bobby Rio and Alan Roger Currie. I do appreciate that. Perhaps if I would have met a woman like you I would have never come to pickup. But I never did, and that past is the past. I only came to pickup after the advice of my female friends and all my relatives failed me. I love them dearly, but I took their advice and the advice of Hollywood and became a miserable failure.
“I’m glad neither one of us gave up on BEING OUR BEST SELVES. If he decided to act like a cocky jerk or if I decided to be some snooty games playing “Rules Girl” we wouldn’t be together.”
Well, OK, whatever works for you, works for you. Most guys who enter into PUA are not smooth players. Sure, some of them want to sleep with hundreds of girls. But most of the other guys I have met, are like me. They tried everything in an attempt to attract women and get girlfriends. But they have failed, failed and failed some more. Finally, they have come to the pickup community, after longer periods, in my case several years, of following bad advice and failing.
Evan Marc Katz says
You’re getting good advice here. You’re just not listening. The key to doing well with women is confidence. Not being a jerk. Not lying. Not being unavailable. Not negging. Just being a guy with opinions, the ability to make decisions, to approach life with vigor, and the willingness to carry yourself like you’re worthy of any woman on the planet. If PUA stuff allows you to fake it ’til you make it, great. But my point – and every woman who categorically denies that she likes asshole players – is that being a nice guy with balls is the holy grail. Women PUT up with assholes over nice guys, but drop assholes for nice guys with balls any day.
Karmic Equation says
Adam,
I’m really fond of the saying “You get what you pay for.” It applies to a lot of life where money is not actually involved.
You can’t equate LYING with a woman putting on makeup. You’re eventually going to see her without makeup. And unless you eventually disclose about your non-existent past, she’s none the wiser. But that is neither her or there.
If all you want is to get laid, then PUA tactics often work. My ex-bf who was a player, slept with over 200 women in his 20s. I know he wasn’t lying. He was pursued by and picked up women left and right when I first met him. What attracted me to him wasn’t that he had slept with over 200 women (I didn’t know this until we convo’d about it 6 months or so after we became bf/gf). What attracted me to him was his confidence, particularly his confidence around women. He knew how to handle them. I think “handling women” is like herding cats. Pretty impossible for most men, but the fact that he knew how to do it was something I admired.
Despite knowing that he was a player (and onboard with the “Once a player, always a player” adage) — I still dated him, for almost a year. But I dated him knowing there was an expiration date to our relationship. He was a bartender at a local joint. And after I broke up with him, eventually we became friends again. One of the nicest things he ever said to me after we re-friended each other was “I worked for over three years at that bar and never met a good woman until I met you.” He wasn’t giving a line. He was sincere.
The point of that story is that MOST good women wouldn’t give a player the time of day. But he was an authentic player, not a make-believe one. And he was nice to his mother. He played board games with her every Saturday afternoon when we were dating. I thought that was sweet. He even made a funny meme about her for Thanksgiving that got a lot of his family and FB friends laughing. He was an authentic guy. He had as many enemies as friends.
Don’t get me wrong, he lied about a whole lot of things, up to even denying he was a player (when I called him on it after we hooked up the first time). When we first met, he said that he worked two jobs and didn’t have a girlfriend. The 2nd part of which was important, because if he didn’t say that, I would never have hooked up with him at all. But a few things that he said over the course of the year we were together made me realize that he was dating someone else when we first hooked up. Perhaps he didn’t consider her his gf, but I’m pretty sure she must have considered him her bf, since he was driving one of her cars O_o
Anyway, I guess this is the long way of saying that women of good character don’t date men with gfs or wives. Women who find that attractive are the kind that will lie (by omission) about being, what did you call it, a “cum train”?
What a hypocrite you are. She slept with the number of partners that you can only fantasize about sleeping with. Why was your heart broken? Did she treat you like crap? It doesn’t sound like she did. You just didn’t like her past, which she was entitled to before she met you and had nothing to do with you. If you said she cheated on you with even one man after becoming your girlfriend, I would have more compassion for you. But before she met you, she could have slept with thousands and it would have been none of your business.
I believe in Karma, that whatever goes around, comes around. Couple that with my belief about “You get what you pay for”, you’re not going to ever be happy, Adam.
It’s better to be good and do good. And pay the price for that, than to lie to get what you want. Especially for something as cheap as easy sex with women who are attracted to you because of your lies. Ultimately, the price that comes due from your lying is going to be far higher than you ever expected to pay.
Be the good guy that you are, Adam. Pretty p*ssies are not worth your soul.
JennLee says
@Adam
Two words.
Tim Tebow.
You can make as many excuses as you want to as to why he was so popular with women, but they will fail.
He was a successful college football player? There were many successful players, and many were known to be bad boys, like you want to be. So why didn’t women flock to meet them like they did with Tim Tebow? There were even nice guys, and religious guys, but they did not have women lining up for a mile, just to get to meet him, and have a picture taken with him.
I’ll help you out. He is honest. He is confident. He is unabashedly Christian, and a professed virgin. And, he is a totally sweet guy. So, according to you, women should loathe him. According to you, it is the many bad boys who should have had women lining up around the block to meet them. Even after his pro career failed, Tim is still very popular with women. They don’t just want to meet him. They dream of marrying him. They don’t dream of marrying the bad boys. Not like they do with Tim Tebow. They see the bad boy as a meal ticket. They see Tim Tebow as their Prince Charming.
SparklingEmerald says
Adam said “What I find so funny, is women are always hiding things in their sexual history from men. Yet, when I advocate that men do the same, suddenly I am the bad guy.”
You admit that you turned on a woman you were involved because of her past sexual history. So men are the problem in that equation. They study PUA, they encourage other men to study it, they teach men to bang every woman they can, then they get angry at women for being “sluts” when THEY are the ones that “slutted” up the female population with their deceit, manipulation and lies. HYPOCRITS. EMK doesn’t advocate that women lie about their sexual past, just that they don’t disclose. Same advice goes for men. My second husband wasn’t a virgin, but pretty darn close to it. He didn’t sleep with women unless he would consider MARRYING them. (OK, maybe except for his first girl, which was a set up by his buddies who felt it was their duty to relieve him of his virginity) I didn’t hold his relatively inexperienced past against him. I didn’t even think to hold it against him. I was EXTREMELY attracted to him (and for the record the divorce was HIS idea, not mine, so did give me that crap that I dumped 25 years later because of his sexual inexperience)
The other hypocrisy about PUA, is they advocate banging all the American women, thus turning them into “sluts” in their own eyes, then going to a foreign country and finding a (supposedly) pure or demi-pure woman to marry. Not only is that BS, but it’s very unpatriotic. It’s bad enough that so many jobs are being outsourced to foreign countries, but now wives are being imported in from abroad, so a bunch of sexual spoiled brats can have their cake and eat it to ? (Act like a man-whore in his own country, than import a virgin or near virgin from a foreign country) Maybe men should go to other countries and sow their wild oats, then come home and find an American woman who is “pure” enough for him. At least he wouldn’t be betraying his own country.
Adam said”
“What I say is what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Learning to be a PUA and generate attraction is no different than a woman learning to dress and put on makeup in a way that makes her look far more attractive.”
Oh good grief, this meme that women who wear make up are liars, so they deserve shabby treatment has been going around the internet for awhile. If we didn’t dress nice, wear makeup, etc. men would complain that we “let ourselves go”. When we do, we are liars who deserve to be played. Just another “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, created by mysogynists and the PUA community.
Seriously, when you see a woman with turquoise eyelids do you NOT know that is make up ? You do realize that our sweat isn’t naturally floral scented don’t you ? And that our legs and underarms aren’t naturally hairless, you realize that to don’t you ? Or have we been so successful at “lying” about our appearance, you really think we are like that naturally ?
When girly magazines start showing, unwaxed, un-airbrushed, no make up, truly naked women, then maybe you can justify downright lies and deceit amoung men. But that make up and grooming that women do, is what most men DEMAND of women. So don’t use that as an excuse to be liars.
Look Adam: I understand being a beta-orbiting nice guy didn’t serve you well in the past, and it is good that you looked for ways to change. But I suspect that you are out for revenge against women as payback for your lonely past. You claim that you wanted to marry and have a family, you claim now that being a lying asshole is causing women to fall all over you. But yet, you still aren’t married. You are still on a vengeful rampage against women. If it’s a REAL relationship you want (and I don’t think you do) then try dropping the asshole routine and take EMKs advice. But I suspect you no longer want a real relationship. You just want revenge against women because of your lonely past.
You aren’t the first man to come to this board looking for revenge against women. And you probably won’t be the last.
starthrower68 says
The thread “Men look for sex and find love; women look for love and find sex” is full of justification for men not being completely up front about what they’re looking for because they want to get laid. Am I suggesting all men change? No. What I am suggesting is if men are going to insist on having g it both ways, that’s fine, but then don’t turn around and get mad at women because there are consequences to getting what you wanted. The culture believes that casual sex is a good thing, but then gets indignant when there are consequences. Sparkling Emeral is spot on.
Adam says
JennLee: Tim Tebow is a rich, famous athlete which trumps everything. Tim Tebow is the EXCEPTION rather than the rule. Besides my own experiences I have spoken to countless other guys who were / are in the same situation. There are exceptions to every rule, but my statement stands for 98% of the guys in this situation. For example, one of my pretty female friends is totally OK with male virgins who are into study and aren’t smooth with women. I am not saying that one for one, every woman is disgusted with these men. The problem is, she is one of 100. That is the problem. For example, there are some rich celebrities that, while they have the choice of any and all beautiful women, are into obese women and end up marrying obese women. But just because some obese women “hit the lottery” and marry a wealthy famous guy, doesn’t mean that the majority of men are attracted to obese women — they are not.
SparklingEmerald: I am not looking for revenge against women in the least. I love women. I am not angry like Wade, as you saw from my earlier comment, I actually encouraged him to calm down. I don’t subscribe to EVERY pickup artist out there. I suggest you look into the two names I mentioned, Bobby Rio and Alan Roger Currie. There ARE various schools of pickup, not all of them involve negs, revenge, hating women, wearing purple hats or calling women “sluts.” I don’t resent women, I accept them as they are, and as I said before, men need to adjust their behavior so they are more attractive to them. That is all. If anything, someone like Alan Roger Currie, a famous seduction coach, is helping women, since he is encouraging men to stop playing stupid games and instead be upfront and honest with what kind of relationships they really want and how they feel. In other words, if a man just wants a woman as a casual hookup partner, he encourages men to be completely honest and straightforward about this fact and not to lie about this. He calls this tactful honesty being “mode one.” Bobby Rio is the king of flirting, social game and making yourself into the playful, teasing (in a good way) cool, guy that every woman wants. All pickup artists are not assholes, some are, some aren’t. But you can say that they all, advocate not being the “nice guy” and making yourself into the kind of man that women want. And THAT I definitely advocate and support.
I consider an inexperienced guy lying about his sexual past, necessary. It is a necessary lie. It is the same thing with giving women the idea that other women think you are attractive. It is a necessary lie if this is not already the case. Fake it until you make it. Outside of that, you should be confident and genuine to a degree. You need to adjust your behavior so you are the kind of dominant, alpha, attractive guy women want. You can’t be a pushover. At first this will be artificial, but as you practice it will become more and more natural. But you absolutely can’t forget those two things. I am not angry or resentful that women are attracted to men who have slept with many other women or at the very least, tons of other women are attracted to, it would be illogical to be so. It is just the way things are. Just like it would be irrational for a woman to be angry that men think models like Cindy Crawford are attractive. It is just the way we are programmed. Nobody should be angry or resentful about these things. Knowing these things are the case, in the case of men, we just need to adopt to this fact. It is like women know that men don’t like obese women. So if a woman is obese, she needs to lose the weight. It is the same thing with a man who is not attractive to women. He needs to learn the necessary behaviors and presentation so he attracts women. Attracting women is a skill like any other skill, like let’s say, for example, being a chef and being able to cook an incredible meal. From the point of view of a person dining at a fine restaurant, someone consuming a delicious meal. Everything is perfect. Someone might think — wow, this chef is talented. He must have been born this way. Perhaps, but more likely, he studied and practiced, practiced and practiced some more. He made mistakes and learned along the way. THEN he was perfect.
As to my ex, it would be one thing if she had that history and sincerely repented her past actions. One of my close female friends, was involved in similar actions when she was young, but after several years of random hookups and sleeping with gang members, she sincerely repented and ceased this behavior. She got involved in Church and turned away from her previous life. She ended up meeting a decent guy and getting married. I love her (as a friend) and I don’t judge her for her mistakes in the past, we all make mistakes. But I am going to judge someone with that kind of history, who doesn’t repent, in fact continues to engage in this kind of behavior and doesn’t treat me with respect. I don’t see the mother of my child being someone who thinks it is completely OK to sleep with random guys all the time.
At the end of the day, for every response to this article saying how inexperienced guys / male virgins are OK, there are tons of articles on how women are disgusted and repealed by these things. Which is again, totally OK. Men need to accept that women finds these things repulsive, just like men find smelly, grossly overweight women repulsive.
Adam says
starthrower68: Good point. Alan Roger Currie makes a similar point. He advocates that men be upfront and honest about what their intentions are which is good advice.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe in telling a woman that I want to marry her and have five kids with her if this is not my plan. But as I have said time and time before, there are definitely certain things about yourself, if you are guy struggling with this area, that you need to hide from women. Sexual history is one of those things. Look, I can talk all day about this and debate it until the end of the time, but if a woman has to choose between the “nice guy virgin” and the confident, jock who has slept with many women, the man all her friends have crushes on, the jock is going to win almost every single time. I am saying adopt the successful traits of the jock. Hide your sexual history, give women the idea that you are just as exciting and attractive as this man. By all means do NOT “be yourself.” Obviously being who you are, a depressed, anxiety ridden virgin is not attractive to women. So you got to fake the attractive traits until they are actually part of you. Once you are successful with women, there is nothing wrong with “being yourself.”
starthrower68 says
I don’t get you young people.
JennLee says
@Adam
“Tim Tebow is a rich, famous athlete which trumps everything.”
Wrong. There are many bad boys who were rich, famous athletes who did not get the same attention that Tim Tebow received from women. There are girls who enrolled at UF because they dreamed of marrying him. Women stood in very long lines just to get a picture with him.
He received this attention because he was a rich, famous athlete who was also a very honest, person who wasn’t afraid to admit that he was a virgin. He was the exact opposite of what you say works.
Tatiayna says
I would suspect 20% is closer to the truth, than 30%. And I wouldn’t call that online dating site, success, per se. As meeting online is an inevitable part of life. Through countless venues, other than online dating sites.. Which no doubt factor into those statistics..
Online dating would far more of a success. If men emailed women they actually had some common ground with.. Unfortunately, most don’t.
Wade Smith says
It’d also be a lot more success if women actually put what they really want in their profile, instead of lying and playing games with people’s heads, which they accuse guys of doing.
Hey, guess what? I don’t know what you like, unless you say so.
About half the women online get offended if you compliment them, and the other half get offended if you don’t.
That’s not “women”. That’s a baby, especially if she doesn’t have the decency to write that sort of thing in her profile.
Yet they’re like that about EVERYTHING.
I’m trying to talk to some woman online, and there may be several things I really just don’t like about her, but I’m like, “Okay, it’s cool with me, but It’s probably not cool with her, but I can certainly try to at least converse with somebody.”
You know, “little” stuff like smoking, or weird tatoos, or she wrote that she likes to get wasted sometimes, and I’m like, “I sort of don’t like any of that stuff, but I actually did like most of the rest of your profile,” So I write her anyway, because it’s not like my options are increasing.
Look, my profile is like this, Typical right side, selection box stuff:
5’9″
A few extra pounds (190lbs now)
Doesn’t smoke
Doesn’t drink
Doesn’t gamble
Doesn’t sleep around
Doesn’t lie or steal or do drugs.
Background/history:
I talk about life experiences or whatever I feel like the day I write it, and I may change it several times over the next few days or weeks.
Interests:
Let’s face it, I’m a nerd. I play Starcraft. I watch Star Trek. I’m re-watching “Seven Days” from the 1990’s. I have an I.Q. of 145. I’ve read the entire Bible several times and 66 Bible commentary volumes, and a couple hundred novels, science books, encyclopedias, etc. So what I write in here can be 10 pages long if I want it to be, and that’d be the tip of the iceberg….
YOU won’t read it, and YOU won’t respond.
And most of you will be interested in next to nothing of it, and I know that. There are a few exceptions. I ran into one woman the other night, and was shocked by her profile. I tried writing her, because her profile was like the female reciprocal of mine, and the woman won’t respond. they say not to write more than once or twice to a woman, so I gave up after two tries. Maybe I’ll let it alone for a month or two and try again, or maybe I’ll come to my senses and realize the woman doesn’t actually want a guy with the same interests as her, she was just writing a profile.
I don’t just write anybody.
I don’t write any woman I couldn’t conceive of myself marrying, at least at that point based on what was known about her from her profile. If there is some red flag that says I’d not marry her based on that knowledge, I do not message her.
I don’t write any woman unless I feel some genuine ability to LOVE her. Period.
What do I get out of it?
Nothing.
You can write me back and call me a lying son of a bitch if you want to, and You will have written more than any 10 women combined from OkCupid and Datehookup and Zoosk, Match, Christian singles, yahoo, and Eharmony COMBINED.
Got it yet?
You women really do not want what you claim you want, and you hold men to unfair and logistically, humanly impossible standards.
Personally, I find it completely insulting and dehumanizing.
Evan Marc Katz says
Sorry, Wade. Don’t blame women because you have no game. No one is saying you’re a bad guy. But complaining that there’s something wrong with women because they don’t appreciate you is ass-backwards. Go on Gk2Gk.com. Buy http://www.findingtheoneonline.com (it’s for men, too). Use http://www.e-cyrano.com. Just stop complaining that women are wrong for not wanting you. Either find nerdy women who appreciate nice dorks who don’t know how to flirt, or learn how to be more successful with women. Those are your choices.
Maria Almudena says
Wade, you sound very ranty and are obviously traumatized by the cultist side of Christianity. There are many things abhorrent about religion, but you cannot keep blaming religious folks for the decisions you’ve made as an adult. I grew up Catholic. A sense of fear, guilt and shame about many things (including sex) was instilled in me, but I proclaimed my independence and reinvented myself as an atheist before I turned 17. And moved on, and never looked back. And kept moving forward, and eventually found my own spirituality in a different form, outside any religious dogma.
I read your stuff, and I realize you are suffering. You have a lot of growing up to do, and part of it is taking responsibility for how much of your suffering you are creating yourself. You have stamped the word “victim” on your forehead and have cast all women in the role of villains. And yet, your psycho-sexual makeup keeps pushing you to try to establish some kind of uncomfortable , precarious alliance with the enemy. You don’t like the way the enemy responds to your advances, and you think you are only approaching enemies you could actually love. But the truth is that you are filled with fear, resentment and insecurity, anticipating yet another another heavy blow each time, and the women you approach can sense this. Their behavior is offensive to you, but in reality is only defensive. No woman wants to be with a man who is afraid of her. Fear and hate are two different forms of the same thing.
The women you approach online don’t owe you a reply, so stop with the bitterness when you don’t get one. It may be easier on your fragile psyche not to hear back anyway. Don’t use their kind evasiveness to fuel your misogyny.
Understand this: Just as most men need to like a woman’s physique to communicate with her online, so most women, too, look for that visual attraction, so it’s not all about common interests.
Also this: You sound like you are sending very intense first messages to women and that in itself can be alienating. If your messages are anything like the extensive rants you are regaling us with here, I would say that if someone receives this sort of thing one-on-one they will see the world “stalker” written all over it.
I think you need to do a lot of healing before you are ready to date. Paraphrasing one poster here, you need to make peace with women before you are ready to make love to them.
I feel sorry for you, and I think most normal, kind women will feel things along those lines when they meet you — online or otherwise. I know you want to inspire passion , not compassion — but you are not going about it the rihgt way.
If I were you, I would begin by engaging the services of a good psychotherapist.
Kristen says
We hold MEN to impossible standards?,Projection, much? Lol.
Ren says
Guys were full-on spamming my inbox with multiple messages before I could reply to even one asking why I wasn’t responding and what was wrong. Guys would become hostile when I told them I wasn’t interested in NSA sex, or guys that had started normal and nice quickly turned the conversation into something explicitly sexual in nature. Seemingly nice dudes in quite esteemed careers asking to hook up in 24 hours and sending them naked pics of myself despite multiple times telling them that I didn’t want to.”
All of this right here is why, as a single woman, I no longer date online.
In the beginning when I first started (this was before online dating became popular and the norm), I was able meet guys, go out on dates, and had few relationships. As the years progressed and I continued to try to meet men online, the quality of men has gotten worse and worse. It eventually got to a point that either men were just viewing my profile but not contacting me (whenever I’ve contacted men I’ve never gotten a response. Not ever), or the ones who did were only looking for NSA sex. It is so true that men online become belligerent when you don’t comply with their inappropriate requests, or if you don’t give them information you don’t feel comfortable sharing.
A few years ago I finally came to the conclusion that online dating was a waste of time. Evan, I know you are a huge proponent of online dating, but I just can’t do it anymore. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. No matter how many times I’ve tried online dating, the results have been the same–men not looking to date but only have sex. Writing a great ad doesn’t matter when men skip over what you write and only respond to you based on your picture. And we women can tell when a man hasn’t taken the time to read our ads.
If I can’t meet a man organically in person, I don’t want to be bothered.
Traveller says
I have to agree with Ren. For perhaps different reasons.
In my experience, the success rate in online dating for average-looking men is so low that it’s simply not worth the effort. You can spend 100 hours online and have one half-baked conversation to show for it. The same amount of time spent in nearly any real-life venue would probably have yielded 2 or 3 real dates.
Online dating is a victim of its own success. It has become so overrun with people that only the highly attractive are able to stand out and have any success. And of course, those are precisely the people that would have the greatest success in any venue, online or otherwise.
So for most, it’s not worth the time. And because of the constant attrition of good men (and women) the online sites are increasingly crowded with the ‘unacceptables’.
Or at least that’s the impression i’ve gotten, after spending nearly five years at it.
N says
I met my current beau online (OKC). I had just broken up with a boyfriend and was held hostage in my house for a week with a broken leg from a sporting accident. Without a boyfriend and unable to go to work for a week I decided to join OK Cupid.
My expectation to meet someone let alone meet a potential boyfriend was ZERO to none. I posted 3 current photos, did some of the Q&As (I want to be specific I will only date a man who is within my age range 5 years give or take, non-smoker, non-drinker, athletic, educated, professional, over 5’10” and within 5 miles from where I live). I had no idea what to write on my profile so I wrote –Three words– Health.And.Fitness. with an intention to write something more at a later time. Within the next 24 hours I exchanged emails and met a man who is now my boyfriend for the past 9 months. He fits the specs and more.
Albeit my time in online dating site was very short-lived, I remember it being fun and exciting! Utilize it in conjunction with other social activities i.e. sporting events, concerts, meet ups, yoga and meditation classes, etc. Have an open mind and don’t take it too serious. My yogi master always says– Don’t take life too cereal Cap’n Crunch! So corny but it never fails to make me laugh :))
Nic~
debbie says
Someone used that gorgeous guy’s pics with the baby blue shirt, blue jeans and curly black hair and scammed me. There is one pic at the beginning of this blog. His user name was JR Michaelson on WealthyMatch. Beware!!
Karmic Equation says
How did you get scammed? I’m curious. You didn’t send money, did you? That is just nuts. I don’t even send money to friends or family. Whyever would you send money to a total stranger?
Wade says
Hey,
There is a data mining and money scam on all dating networks. In fact, I’m convinced Datehookup actively encourages scamming people, and the administrators may even be in on the scamming.
Pretty photograph, just convincing enough, a half decent, just interesting enough profile. Wow. Let’s message her.
Couple hours later:
Check inbox, “Hey, a response! Let’s see what we got here.”
Spends a few hours (or sometimes a day) exchangine texts with some bitch who claims to be in New Orlearns, but is really in Pennsylvannia, on a “business trip”, and after all this she “agrees” to meet for a date since she’ll be “back in NOLA” on such and such a day. So then when the day comes, she asks for some ridiculous amount of money to help get back home.
It’s a human being who sits on the other side of the computer and spends her entire day talking to guys, trying to steal any information she can from you, or trying to convince you to buy airline tickets or send money.
She’s really good at setting up “double pronged” attacks too: Make a profile, wait for the sucker (me or some other guy) to fall for it, etc. While you’re talking to her, you suddenly get a message from another person…who’s profile you probably visited, but didn’t respond to…get ready, they’re both in on it.
Its the same person, the FBI knows about her, and can’t catch her anyway, and she runs that gimmick every day.
Yes, it happens to guys.
Yes, it happens often.
I get many, many more con-artist responses than real dating related responses. Probably 10 to 1 or worse.
Karmic Equation says
Maybe it’s because I’m Asian. While I get a few inappropriate messages, most are ok, and are more along the “You’re hot” short msgs. When I bother to send a thanks-but-no-thanks message, most guys are very polite, and reply “Thanks for your honest reply. Good luck to you too!”
Once or twice I got blasted. But one time was because the guy was trying too hard and he seemed nice so I tried to tell him he shouldn’t try so hard to impress with his message (he wrote an essay, and it seemed cut & paste). He didn’t appreciate my advice and called me names. Lesson learned. After that, no more unsolicited advice or I don’t bother responding.
starthrower68 says
I just had an interesting e-mail exchange with a fellow who was upset because women block him when he turns the conversation sexual. He says we’re frigid. I tried to conduct an exercise in empathy with him and explain to him, kindly and politely, why a woman might take umbrage. His response was that he thought a woman would feel worse about not being noticed at all than being sexually objectified. I really didn’t know where to go with that and just decided to let it alone and move on.
Karl S says
He’s very naive if he thinks it’s a good idea to turn the conversation sexual at any point. Even if a meeting does result in a hook-up, you only get there by building a rapport and keeping everything strictly polite and G-rated until you get a read on the other person and what the vibe is between you face to face. I’ve only ever had one online conversation that got sexual and that was because she was much older than me, knew exactly what she was after and didn’t want to waste time.
JennLee says
I agree with Karl. It is very naive, but it seems there are no shortage of naive men in this regard. Also, I had a friend who confided to me that there is some misguided PUA stuff out there that tells men to quickly make things sexual or they risk being put in the friend zone. There may be some truth to that but I would say two things in response. First, most men are clumsy at it. Second, making a flirty sexual innuendo and leaving it at that is sufficient, but most men go way way too far. I could also add a third point in that there are also men who are only interested in the sexual stuff and nothing else. So it is better for men to separate themselves from those types by not engaging in sexual talk at all. It is better to not say anything sexual than to say something clumsy.
Traveller says
I think that a HUGE proportion of the people online are there precisely because they have few or no social skills. That certainly seems to be the case with the majority of the women I encounter and I can’t imagine it’s any better with the guys.
GL says
I keep making jokes about running a prostitution ring on OK Cupid. The women who understand what I mean laugh, the ones who don’t understand react…we’ll not enthusiastically. LOL! It is BAD on the free sites, although there are some gents. Guys…you are not going to impress many women with your advances. I shut my profile down after a ‘last straw,’ when ANOTHER poor sap emailed me saying he just got out of a relationship and wants a FWB. Gimme a break! I’m going to try a paid site down the road, I need a break!
Misty Gilbert says
I began dating/online dating for the first time ever, April 2014. Two weeks into it, I had 65 guys messaging me. Overwhelming??? Absolutely!!! To the point I wanted to quit? More than. But I didn’t. I set goals and expectations on myself to be different a create an experience that they would remember. I messaged every guy back, expressed to them a nice compliment or appreciation for what they wrote, even if it wasn’t one I wanted to proceed with, there is no reason to treat them ugly, rude, disrespectful, or harsh. Yes, I have my criteria and deal breakers and I don’t plan to deviate from them, but you can still be sweet about it. Be generous. Be loving. Be kind. Everyone is in this to find their soul mate and it isn’t easy for either party. Dating gets a bad rap because people don’t treat each other as they want to be treated. Date intentionally. Be open, authentic and real. Don’t play games and you won’t have people playing games with you. Communicate. Be reasonable. Trust that God will bring you the person you need in your life!
Traveller says
Wow! You’re a gem, Misty! Good for you. And on behalf of the men, thank you for being so nice.
Elizabeth says
I’m 61 and get the lot: dick photos, men wanting me to be a mother to their children (not interested), men wanting to be married (not interested), men wanting to emigrate and live with me (said in the opening email. Again, not interested), 20 and 30 year olds looking for a shag (what?!), men looking at my photos and not my profile, undereducated barely literate men (I have a doctorate and prefer to be able to converse with like minded people), men from across the ocean (my profile on okcupid states “nearby”), men wanting me to support them, and so on. It’s depressing and tedious. My profile says exactly what I’m after, yet few bother reading it. When I send a short note say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” some will get nasty. Some will say to a comment such as “I’m only interested in considering local men,” that they are willing to migrate, and what’s the weather like in Australia. Gee wizzz. Words fail me.
Christi says
I’ve been hit on several times by men far older than me, the most recent being in his early 50s. I might mention that I’m 18.
It’s absolutely disgusting and irritating and constantly I’m left wondering why I only seem to attract men who are far older than me and only have an interest in having relations with a young girl who isn’t even out of her parents’ house yet. What I wouldn’t give to attract one nice guy who is around my age!
Kristen says
They hit on young girls because they think you are easier to mold/manipulate.Horrible, but true.
JustB says
I’m in my early 30’s, and have been doing online dating on and off for about 5 years. I find that I tend to get a particular kind of avalanche: 1. The older guy (55+) that is looking to show wife #1 he’s still got it; 2. The foreign guy who’s looking for a green card (a friend says I have the “perfect passport”: American with visas to live in a couple different countries.) ; and 3. The foreign guy who interprets my covered-up photos to mean that I’m socially, politically, or otherwise conservative, and therefore perfect to bring home to mother. I figure this is because my professional photos (best advice ever, Evan!) were taken outdoors in winter and the seasonally-appropriate dressing is being mistaken for a particular moral code.
On the “that’s interesting” side of things, I received a proposition from someone who was married and was looking for someone to surrogate their child and avoid the “high costs” of dedicated agencies. I’ve also heard from a few cross-dressers; someone who sent me a long..fanfic…involving me, him, 2 other people, and PVC clothing; and someone who claimed to be a vampire and was looking to start a coven. I’ve also received a couple of messages from diaper fetishists, looking for an “adult figure” to join them.
I think what helps to have a bit of a zen attitude. It is what it is. The long-distance guys get a “local only, thanks anyway”, the creeps get ignored, the truly weird get a “Wow. Interesting. Not into that, but thanks for saying hello.” If someone normal-ish comes along, I’ll go out on a date or 2 with them and see what comes of it.
Wade says
“What’s it like to be me, trying to get a positive response from a woman on any dating site.”
This is a bit of a rant, but there is no strong language, except where used in a hypothetical context. It’s a “rant” because “advice” whether by man or woman absolutely never works for me, even if I follow it to the letter every time, or if I try to follow it as a “general rule” doesn’t matter, doesn’t work.
My online dating woes:
Man repeatedly tries free dating sites, such as OkCupid and Datehookup, etc, has repeatedly tried eharmony and match and others, and never gets a positive response from a woman.
Man is a perfect gentleman, and doesn’t talk trash to women, and does pretty much everything correctly, automatically, by nature that the WOMEN say they want a man to do in those complaints they write on their facebook page or another blog.
When noticing an interesting woman’s profile, man spends 30 minutes to an hour deciding what he likes best about her and how best to communicate with her, and tries to compose a coherent message to her; Trying not to sound like a complete stick in the mud, while I also trying not to sound like the guy she claims not to want who just wants to get down her pants.
I never use profanity or say stupid crap to women like “hey you want to get laid” or whatever, okay maybe sometimes some sort of innuendo if she started it first in her profile.
I respond to her profile. The type of photo she has, the substance of her profile. That is my nature. I work with whatever she gave me.
After several years of this off and on, man has had 1 neutral first response and 2 positive first responses to contacts. Among those, the “neutral” as I defined it, is she bothered to reply to me to tell me she wasn’t interested. Hey, that’s better than I got out of 99.99% of women, so she gets thanked for that.
For the 2 positive first and second responses to contacts, absolutely nothing leading to any meaningful conversation, flirting, or real contact (except in cases where it later turned out to be a con artist). One of the women got upset when it took me too long to load an extra photo, and cut contact. The other woman, after the third contact or so, got upset over some minor misjudgment on my part about dining behavior on a first date.
That’s what my “online dating” experience has been. I can take the “dating I.Q.” test and get a perfect score, and did that BY MY NORMAL DECENT NATURE, and never once get a positive response from any woman on the internet.
Man wonders what he is doing wrong, checks “what not to do” from Okcupid itself. Turns out women don’t want to be complimented, according to them, but accoring to other sources they do. Check a very large rant from a WOMAN on okcupid and datehookup, and her biggest complaints were against everything wrong that I NEVER do.
I wrote her a multi-page response telling her I already did everything she claimed women wanted, and didn’t do the things she claimed women didn’t want, and it never worked.
It doesn’tmatter what site you go on:
Christian site (Hey, I’d actually prefer that, but they turn out to be the worst actually, because everyone is a judgmental hypocrite.)
Okcupid: Love the site in principle. Never get any responses though.
Datehookup: The forum is more interesting and mor einteractive than the actual dating messaging. The women never respond to text messages. Asking some of the women about certain things on the forum leads to conflicting ideas, because I’d rather go to the source on “how to get a woman to respond,” but then the “source” contradicts itself.
Match and Eharmony: A girl once said she might like to go out, so I suggest coffee, as it’s the safe, decent thing to do. She says, “I don’t like coffee,” I try something else, normal “decent” first meeting/dating ideas, and she shoots that down and doesn’t respond afterwards. Maybe she wanted me to take her to a 4 star restaurant on a first meeting, I don’t know.
Man gives up on the “decent” sites because never get responses from them anyway, and tries “dirtier” places, contrary to my own convictions, so use your imagination. No luck there either, unless I wanted a prostitute, which I don’t. I’m not accusing everyone in those places of being that either, I’m just saying that’s the way it is.
Man spends tens, scores, hundreds of dollars to get a membership on another “decent” paid site. Man discovers that after having paid, he can’t contact non-paying members, and there aren’t any paying members nearby. Site refuses to refund the money.
Man spends money on Zoosk and discovers it has no favorites system, and you can’t even keep track of who you have and haven’t messaged, and when, or even how to send a second “refresher” message to the same person, if you can even find their profile again among the useless search criteria they have.
Man ends up reading a 10 page rant by a female dater about how all the guys mistreat her, etc, etc, and I’m like, “I’ve never once done any of those things to a woman…”
And when I wrote about a 10 page response to her publicly about it, she didn’t answer, because she knows what she was telling guys to do doesn’t “work” either.
She could get a message from me, and as soon spit in my face as date me, and 30 minutes later she’ll get a message from one of the creeps she claims she doesn’t want to hear from, and she’s sold on him.
Seriously, “want to fuck” usually is not the first thing that comes to my mind anyway, but maybe that really is what they want a guy to write to them, even though they claim they don’t, because they DO NOT respond to what they claim they will respond: “romance” or “talking nice” or “just being friends”. Okay, what guy has ever gone on a dating site “just looking for friends” anyway?
If I said that in a vacuum, I’d be a LIAR, like her, and then she actually would have some excuse to accuse me of gaming her. Besides, I’ve tried that one, and it doesn’t work anyway. In some cases, someone lives 5 to 10 miles away, you could easily meet for coffee and have a few laughs, etc, and if nothing comes of it, not much lost, but you don’t even get a response from them, and you know they got your message because they were online 10 minutes after you wrote it.
Now on the other hand, “non-scientific” studies have been done as a joke by media and comedians which showed women automatically rated a guy 3 to 5 points higher based on his income being higher than expected (hidden information) compared to when she was first introduced to his profile.
I guess it really is true what they say. Money talks, and bullshit walks.
I’ll find someone right for me eventually, but in all likelihood, it actually won’t be by taking the “female dating guru’s” advice either, because she doesn’t want what she says she wants either, and she’s writing a 10 page rant about guys not knowing how to talk to her.
Like I told her, most female profiles look like they were composed by first grader. They can’t spell five letter words. They say things like:
“I like having fun. I’m down to Earth and live life to the fullest.” *If has child Insert here* “I have x kids, they are my world….looking for “experienced” man.”
Anybody else notice the contradiction here? She doesn’t want a player (rant page, search google for it,) but in her profile she says she…wants a player…but doesn’t want a player…
Hey guess what? Keep treating the guy knocking on your door worse than you would a stray DOG and he certainly doesn’t learn anything useful about whatever in the heck it is you expect from him, so whatever you THINK you want as “experience” you contradict yourself and prevent yourself from having. Then you turn around and go with the very guy you LIED to the other guy about, and date him, and marry and divorce him 2 years later.
You think guys lie to women?
Join a dating site, you poor fool. Women lie at least twice as much as men, and they do it for the same or worse reasons.
I can predict 80% of what her profile will say before I read it, because most of it falls in that vein:
Read between the lines of her profile:
“Seemingly decent Female dating site user ACTUALLY doesn’t know what she really wants, but sure has fun mocking or ignoring any guy who tries to contact her.”
Count yourself blessed, guy, whoever you are, who may have actually had a few positive experiences on dating sites.
They are supposed to be to help people meet, and they seem to cause more strife than good.
Oh yeah, I’m a Christian, and the 3 positive responses I’ve ever gotten actually came from atheists and agnostics….or little “good” christians who lie about their religion after having read the okcupid study showing people respond more favorably to the term “atheist” than to any other religious affiliated term.One lie is as good as another, it seems, for a woman.
I don’t want to come off as being “bitter,” but it really does start to sting when you get kicked in the teeth by literally every person you try to contact.
Oh, by the way, No I don’t just message the prettiest or the most fashionable, or the fittest or whatever. I have weird and varied tastes. I could just as easily love a “Goth” as a “Legally Blonde” Reese Witherspoon type, or whatever, and I’ve made that clear in the past.
What they are looking for is a lie though. A while back, I messaged this girl who had a profile which was screaming, “I’m what you really need/want.” So I waited, and I waited. Then a few weeks later I messaged her again, and I waited. I know she was online the whole time, but no response. Why? She doesn’t want what she claims she wants. She wants something I’ll never be no matter what, if I bent over backwards trying, and ripped my eyes out and laid them at her feet, so what’s the point of it?
The closest match I’ve found on the entire internet in terms of personality and interests, and the woman refuses to even respond to me.
This post does not reflect typical message length. When I write to somebody on a dating site it is usually between 4 sentences and 4 paragraphs, depending on how much she wrote in her profile, and how much I find her interesting.
anyway, I’ve said enough, and I’m sure most of it is already known by other guys like me. I don’t know what women’s responses will be, but hey, you’re welcome to roast me or agree with me. I’ll listen and learn, or maybe you’ll respond with stuff I’ve already found out doesn’t really work, either way I guess spending a few minutes or hours debating it here is better than a lot of other things I could be doing with my time.
Wade says
I’m a 33 year old christian virgin guy, and I’ve been rejected by every allegedly “good” woman I have ever attempted contact with, because they want either more money, or a “more experienced” guy, paradoxically. Claims she doesn’t want a player, but actually does want a player.
Well, if it could help me love you any better, or help you love me better, than I could certainly wish I had fucked around some. I’m quite sorry to have disappointed you. I was raised in an ultra-conservative family, and I had severe social anxiety on top of that, and it pretty well screwed me over for the first ~20 years of life in terms of normal dating experiences, and I’ve spent the next third of my life trying to fix the damage.
Sorry to disappoint though. I’m not “experienced” and I have to read the “how to” guide for stimulating a woman, because I’ve never done it myself, and you’ll obviously laugh your ass off because a significant percentage of 15 year olds have infinitely more dating and sexual experience than a 33 years old guy.
So be it.
Some of you did your share to help create me.
Sorry to disappoint that I had a medical problem causing me to be impossibly shy, and pretty much no woman ever figured that out and you know, tried to make a first move or anything, because you mostly expect the guy to know everything and do everything perfectly. Obviously you do, because if that wasn’t the case, somebody, somewhere, would have given me a chance by now.
Anyway…Women ONLY seem to date guys who sleep around, and they say so in their profile on the one hand, but then lie to themselves about it and bitch and complain at the guy when they realize he…sleeps around…wtf…
But they don’t even respond to the guy who obviously doesn’t do the things they claim they don’t want a guy to do either.
If that’s how you supposedly “good” women want to be, then hey, if one of you actually wanted a decent guy, I’ve tried to be that all my life, but since you never so much as acknowledge a person exists, screw it.
If you allegedly “good” women want ME to do what YOU do to guys, fine.
I’ve had that in my mind for a long time now, not likely something any of you will be familiar with, but the story goes in the Bible that “God” told “Hosea” to go buy a prostitute named “Gomer” off the auction block down town, and marry her.Oh this has been on my mind for quite a few years now, because it came to my attention that none of the “good” ones wanted me anyway. I thought about it, and I feared to think about it, and then I thought about it some more and prayed about it, and the more I think about it the more “right” it seems.
You “ladies” get what you want: Guys like me who tried to follow the “true love waits” lie, and ended up stuck somewhere in no-man’s land get to leave you alone, while you pursue the very players you claim you don’t want…and end up with broken, screwed up marriages 2 years later every time.
Guys like me don’t get what I really want, but I just might get what I obviously need, since none of you want me.
What I wanted was love. I don’t know what the hell everyone else wanted. They use the same word, but they actually hate one another.
Hey, win win I guess….If you change the definition of win quite a bit anyway.
Why?
I write the pristine virgin (apparently) but she doesn’t reply.
I write the single mother, and she doesn’t reply.
I write the goth, and she doesn’t reply.
I write to the bi-sexual girl, and she replies (sometimes,) but isn’t interested.
I write to the “Christian” on Christian mingle/single or whatever other site, and they don’t reply.
I write the atheist, they don’t reply. Actually, a few do. I’ve never gotten a reply from a “Christian” unless she was claiming to set me up with someone else, and then that person never responded. Go figure.
Okay, and I don’t think of them like that while I’m writing, I’m just making the point that I give everyone a chance, and they don’t give me a chance. I don’t just write anyone, I write people I genuinely seem to like, and genuinely have some things in common with, and they don’t give a damn and don’t reply.
So really, really sinking in that women in America most certainly hold men to a much higher standard than they hold themselves, and impossible standard really. I mean hell, if I’m not your “pure and honest guy” or whatever it is you TELL YOURSELF you’re looking for, then lady you aren’t going to find one.
Problem number one is I’m too honest about it, but if you want “me” then you have to deal with it, because I don’t lie for a job, and I don’t lie for a date, and I won’t lie to save a marriage either.
You don’t want that anyway. You want a guy who sleeps around, but you tell yourself you don’t because you somehow think that makes you feel better. If he and I message you under otherwise similar circumstances, you’ll take him every time, you’ll ignore me and not even respond, and then you’ll blame that poor fool when he messes up again, even though he is in fact EXACTLY what you wanted the whole time. I’ve been doing this little circle jerk my entire adult life now, so I get it. Whatever you say you want, it’s probably a lie. Whatever you think you want, it’s probably a lie.
Evidence exhibit A: The “White Knight” lie.
“I’m waiting for my prince charming/white knight to sweep me off my feet,” or some variant of it.
Well, your first problem is that was a fairy tale, honey. A fantasy. You know, as in NOT REAL.
Now I tried to be pretty damn much exactly that, but you know it just doesn’t work. It’s good for driving you crazy, but not much else.
If you wanted some “white knight” you wouldn’t treat people like me the way you do.
You want to get pissed on.
You want to get a failed relationship and divorce.
You go to it willingly, knowingly.
You like abusive men. Sure you do, you date them 10 times over before you’d even speak to me.
You like drug users and thugs. Then when the asshole punches you in the face and ruins your eye or your jaw, you go back to him, or some other jerk worse than him.
Hey, I’ve actually seen some of you get married, get divorced, and back on the same dating site. I’ve been single that long, and God help you, you still have the same problem you did before the previous marriage!
And you HURT ME worse than I have ever hurt any person in my life. One after another YOU HURT ME.
You complain if a guy messages too many girls inside a week, but from HIS perspective, he has the experience of being rejected over and over to the point of being disgusted with even trying, after not one of you answers within a year anyway.
So why the hell am I, or any other guy, beholden to limit myself to wait on your response? Hey, we all know the vast majority of the time is NOT coming, because you’ve already rejected and pre-judged me for 500 reasons I don’t even know about, and I don’t have the time to wait on 1 response that isn’t coming per day or per week, BUT you hold that against a guy if he message 5 or 10 people.
So you and your “girlfriend” posted two profiles online (I happen to know some of you are even dirty and make several extra “bait” profiles,) and a guy responded to both of them, because you know, maybe you both live in the same area, and maybe you’re both interesting, and maybe he has a God given right to talk to whoever he damn well wants to, BUT you two got mad at him and neither of you responded because he spent his time and wrote to two “women” in the same day.
Oh my God what a CRIME.
You spiteful, jealous Evil Bitch, get a life.
If there was an ounce of love between the two of you, then you might have done something, you know, rational and mature, like I don’t know, talk to one another and see whether one of you was a better fit for the guy than the other, and maybe, just maybe instead of being a spiteful evil bitch, one of you might have got to meet a decent guy, and the other would get their chance later…but noooo. Instead, you both falsely accused HIM of being a “Player” because he read two profiles and said “hello”.
Piss off. Try hard enough to make somebody look bad, and guess what? you will.
Congratulations. You got what you wanted.
If that’s how all of you are, then no wonder online dating is so screwed up.
You’re a GIRL he’s a GUY. You’re on a DATING SITE. If you don’t answer him, he’s messaging someone else. You’re wasting his time, and you don’t have a right to demand that he only talk to you, when there’s next to zero chance that you’re actually interested in him in the first place. It’s an unfair and unreasonable standard.
So after seriously coming to grips that women really do not want a decent guy at all, and moreover, they go out of their way to ruin the good name of the guys who are decent, I said wtf, you know. Why bother?
Now on a forum, or a blog, you “ladies” will respond with criticism, insults, mockery, bad advice, good advice (I know not which is which at this point), etc, etc. Blame the guy for admitting he visited such and such site, etc.
Same guy sends you a simple, “Hello, would you like chat or get a coffee sometime,” followed by a few sentences or paragraphs explaining things I think are interesting about you, that we might have in common, and so on, and you ignore it. I know you’re online, because some of these sites alert you that the other person is online, so it’s not like, “oh, gee, she just didn’t get the message yet, she’s having a busy day.”
Hey, you certainly don’t owe anyone a response either, but as a guy, it would be nice, from time to time, if you even bothered to acknowledge that I’m a human being who actually sat down, read your profile, and spent 30 minutes or an hour thinking about what I liked about you and how to best say it. Wasn’t that one of “women’s” complaints? That guys don’t know how to express themselves, or they can’t spell, or they can’t write a meaningful message, “he sent me dick picks,” or some other BS I’d never do…
Honestly, I find some very, very uneducated women online all the time on all the most common sites. I’m typing this rather quickly so it may not be evident, but I have a clerical aptitude about 4 standard deviations above average,a nd quite frankly most of you women are terrible at writing and spelling and elucidating or articulating your feelings and interests.
You want a guy to be honest right? Not really, but you say you do.
So here it is:
Most of your profiles suck horribly, and I find myself poring over scores of stuff like this:
Lazy:
“Message me and I’ll tell” *otherwise blank profile.
When you foolishly bother to message her, you won’t get a response.
Canned soup:
This one lists 50 adjectives and pronouns which are nearly identical to the other girl, with no substance.
I’m thoughtful, lovely, provocative, honest, sincere, loyal, flexible, dependable, intuitive, sensitive, full of life, outgoing, endearing, understanding, expectant, expeditious, adventurous, “God fearing” etc, etc, humble, and so on.
Can you write a sentence? A paragraph?
Do you seriously complain about guys not being able to hold a conversation, while your very sentience is in question, as you sound like an android?
Half of these tend to be con-artists anyway. There seems to be some hypnotic effect that the “Nigerians” have figured out, so that guys fall for this crap anyway, and then find themselves messaging somebody who is about to ask for money.
I don’t know what the other half are, maybe they really are just that lazy.
Obviously a liar:
Half the responses in her basic bio are contradicted by what she wrote in the paragraphs section of her profile.
So I go join some pretty dark, and quite honestly disgusting “Adult” dating sites. I guess insert “most guys’ excuse to visit a porn site”, but I honestly started going to those places because nobody would respond to me on normal dating sites.
I don’t get replies from very many people there, but I actually do get to talk to people once in a while, but nothing ever seems to come of it, but a lot more than “Christian mingle” or okcupid or the rest of them. I don’t really even want to go to those sites, but for some reason one day I did, and I’m still ashamed of it, but they treat guys better there than on the supposedly “christian” site.
Whatever. I’m done with this for now. I’ll probably say something else in a bit, but I’ve got two papers to write tonight, and some other stuff, which I have to find time to do.
starthrower68 says
While I am certainly not without sympathy for your frustration I don’t think either gender has anything on the other when it comes to this sort of behavior. I’m not asserting that you haven’t experienced what you claim but it would appear that it might be useful not to take this stuff so personally. If a woman is choosing mistreatment over a healthy relationship, then you have dodged a bullet. I can’t say I’m a fan of the PUA thing but maybe you might look into it for the sake of learning if there’s something you can take away to make your approach more effective. I can only speculate, of course, but anything would be an improvement over the anger and resentment.
EmeraldDust says
Wade @ 43 – First, I am sorry you are feeling so despairing. And I hope you have your anxiety disorder under control. I know that the world judges mood disorders very harshly, but in reality it is a brain chemical imbalance, but it is not judged like having low blood sugar or a calcium deficiency. (perhaps because the symptoms are more difficult to deal with) but there are various treatments to get the symptoms under control.
I couldn’t read your post in it’s entirety, but I am really puzzled that Christians have such a hard time pairing up. This is not the first I’ve heard about this. I used to envy people who belonged to a church, because I figure they have a regular pool of people with shared values, and opportunities to meet. And usually several types of special interest groups. (singles groups, hiking groups, charitable work groups, etc.) In the early years of my marriage I belonged to a Religious Science church (not a Christian denomination) and later Unity, which calls itself a Christian denomination, but more mainstream Christians called the a heretical cult. Anyway, I sometimes think about going back, to give me a chance at meeting a fairly like minded person. However, there were quite a few things that I couldn’t quite believe in both of these churches, so I would feel like a hypocrit going to a church to couple up and socialize if I wasn’t more on board with their beliefs. And I’m an agnostic to boot, which is basically a Heathen, so even a very liberal church like those 2, I just wouldn’t be quite right there.
But it really astounds me that Christian folk have the same, and maybe even more struggles than other searching singles. Isn’t Christianity all about marriage, fidelity, & waiting ? (although I think very few Christians wait until marriage, most are at least in a serious relationship that has a very real possibility leading to marriage before becoming physically intimate)
I see many singles struggle to find a partner, that I just didn’t think it would be that hard for. (I’m in the 50+ crowd and I know that a tough order to fill) But when I see young, very beautiful, very sweet women struggle to find love, and young, chivilrous, attractive men who are lonely and say they can’t find someone, and now Christians can’t even find each other on a Christian dating site or a church, it really does make me wonder, what on earth is going on, and why do SO MANY good people seem to struggle to find love ?
Traveller says
@EmeraldDust:
Emerald, I have an honest question for you. You said:
“when I see young, very beautiful, very sweet women struggle to find love…”
WHERE, exactly, are these women? Most of my friends are married, and every time this kind of topic comes up, they swear that there are “lots” of available women, all around. Yet whenever I suggest that maybe they should introduce me to a few of them, suddenly they can’t remember the names of any of these hypothetical women.
So just where would one go to FIND these single women? Where do they hang out? How do you locate them? They don’t seem to have names, addresses or phone numbers, indeed, they seem to be invisible.
Obviously, I’m not asking you to send me an address book, but I _am_ curious to find out where single women go to meet guys, so that I can go there, too!
Lest I be accused of not being fair, I can tell women EXACTLY where they need to go to meet tons of single, eligible well-employed men. So let’s hear it. Where are all the single gals hiding?
Evan Marc Katz says
This is just as dumb a question as when women say, “Where are all the quality men?”
They’re everywhere. They’re just mixed in with the rest of ’em. Instead of focusing on “where are they?” focus on who you’re being that is failing to attract quality women. Seems to me that your litany of complaints would indicate a high level of insecurity, a victim mentality, a pervasive sense of negativity, and a considerable amount of delusions about the nature of women, dating, and online dating.
In other words, 50 million people are married in the U.S. 1/3 of all marriages start online in some form. Seems to me that maybe it’s not as difficult as you think to find a partner, and that your 70 comments on the blog in the past day are more indicative of your blind spots than anything that is “wrong” with women in general.
Traveller says
@Evan:
Your comments are getting increasingly nasty, Evan. I asked her for her opinion on the best places to meet these women. Your rejoinder is uncalled-for.
But since you keep trotting out that study you so cherish, let’s examine some of the figures cited.
According to the CDC, there are 2,162,000 marriages each year in the US. That’s 4,324,000 people. Now, eHarmony’s own study, which they conducted, claims that 35% of those people met online. That’s 1,513,400 people. EHarmony’s own figures, from their advertising splash page, say that eHarmony alone accounts for 86,140 of those. They also claim to account for more marriages than all other online services combined.
Match.com, which is in second place, doesn’t do nearly as well. From Match’s press kit, they claim that they account for 4, 380 people a year getting married from their site.
Now, 86,140 + 4,380 = 90,520. That sounds like a lot, but that’s only SIX PER CENT of the claimed 1.5 million couples that supposedly met online. Which means that ALL the other online services, none of which are anywhere close to Match in volume of marriages, let alone eHarmony, have to try to account for the other 94% of the claimed figure.
Now, when you put this together with eHarmony’s claim that they alone are responsible for more than half of the online-generated marriages, that means that about 88% of those are completely unaccounted-for.
Either that, or the study is simply bogus, a puff piece designed as advertising for eHarmony’s services.
Evan, you seem like generally a nice guy. I don’t want to fight with you. Please stop calling me names any time I disagree with you and accusing me of things without any basis. If I say that I suspect something is wrong, it’s because I have good reason to. I’m not any more biased than you are, but there are a lot of things that are open to interpretation. I don’t mind discussing them, or even arguing a bit, but I don’t appreciate the ad hominem attacks. Come on, can we be nicer?
Have a good night.
SparklingEmerald says
Ok, I’m not going to give you their names and addresses, but here’s a synopsis of sweet young things:
A co-worker. Absolutely beautiful (think if Courtney Cox had a 20 year old daughter) Gorgeous figure, ebony hair, sparkling blue eyes, colgate smile, VERY SMART, (but in a rather average career, so she is not the “intimidating bossy career woman category”. ) Very sweet personality, and yet for all her beauty and brains, a little on the shy side. Not to the point of seeming mousey & timid, but charmingly shy. Again, for all her brains, she wasted 2 years with the office player. Left her heart broken. As for the office player, he’s pretty much run out of co-workers to play, so I assume he’s playing elsewhere. Perhaps “player” is an unfair characterization. He seems to be more of a serial monogamist. He has had a string of beautiful women, and seems to last about 2 years each relationship, but can never quite pull the trigger and get married. And why should he ? He doesn’t seem to have any problem getting a gorgeous girlfriend every two years. Check around your office (after checking with your company policies on “fraternizing”.) Is there a desirable (not necessarily drop dead gorgeous woman) single in your office ? Are you OK with dating a co-worker ?
Meet Up. Very pretty woman in my Meet Up group. Sweetest personality I have ever met. I wanted to set her up with my son, but I miscalculated her age BIG TIME. Turns out she is 40. Thought she was late 20’s. (She’s Asian & I don’t judge ages of other races very well. She also has never had children, and she has the figure of a 16 year old, very slim hips) She is also rather shy. I know that she lived with a man for several years, but they never married. She will not try online dating. Frankly, I’m not sure how she feels about men, dating, etc. nor what she wants in that regard. Our friendship is mainly through Meet Up. I do see extremely overweight, men 20 – 30 years older learing at her and hitting on her. She just looks uncomfortable. She doesn’t tell them to back off, but she doesn’t lead them on. I want to smack them, but obviously I don’t.
Going into the way back machine, I had a friend in my younger years who all my single men were drooling over. Very pretty woman, very bubbly outgoing personality, very nice figure. They all wanted to meet her. But she got hung up on a guy who just wasn’t that into her, chased him, ended up in a 2 year “this is not a relationship, we don’t need to attach labels to this, you aren’t my girlfriend” type thing. I wanted to smack her. (obviously I didn’t) They broke up, she married someone else a few years after that and we lost touch. They eventually divorced, now she is a single senior mom with a teenager. We are back in touch again.
Since you seem so averse to online dating, consider Meet Up. I have had a few dates and one “almost relationship” as a result. Meet Up is like a combination of online dating and dating in real life. There are tons of special interest groups that do activities. People sign up to go to said activities. Most people have a profile with a picture. You can check out who is going to particular events, read their profile, check out the picture. If you get to the event, strike up a conversation. You just never know . . .
I must admit, I have 3 never married girlfriends. 2 of them, I would say their biggest mistake is wasting time on EU men. (and they aren’t even the stereotypical, tall gorgeous man, just average looking emotionally unavailable men) They’ve languished years in relationship with men who “weren’t looking for anything serious”. (I’ve told them to no avail not to waste time with such men, they always tell me I was right, after they get dumped, but then they go out and do it again) My other never married girlfriend, well let’s put it this way, she lives out of state now, and if we were in the same state, I would be backing off that friendship. I honestly think she is OCD, She’s fairly attractive, great figure, nice facial features, but her tense look doesn’t help. But she is so particular and fussy and precise about EVERYTHING that she drove me crazy last time we had a visit. She gave me her opinion that I spent to much money on grapefruit. She told me I poured too much cereal in my bowl. We had to call ahead to restaurants to be sure they had her brand of liquor. It takes her forever to order a meal, because she has exact specifications for every damnm morsel on the plate. So there is no mystery to me as to why she never married (but she has had some long term co-habitating relationships)
So traveller, try meet up, try work, try bookstores, try art galleries, try online dating again.
I too am mystified when men claim that women never reply to their e-mails. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was having a good rapport in e-mail, and then they disappeared. I responded to plenty of e-mails, and mostly they were a dead end to nowhere. I don’t respond to EVERY e-mail, but I don’t ignore them all as you seem to think our gender does.
And yes, I don’t respond to a well written e-mail, if after looking at the profile and pic, I either see a glaring incompatibility OR, if I don’t see myself ever being attracted to the guy. I can’t always tell if I will be attracted, but there are times when I can rule it out. I catch some heat on this board for admitting that I am not attracted to every man who shows interest in me, but tell me Traveller, would you rather be ignored online, or waste an evening at a wine bar, only to be told at the end of the meeting “I don’t think we are a match” ?
The last “well crafted e-mail” that I responded to has resulted in a relationship. I had to kiss a lot of frogs, but I finally found my prince. I am almost 60, and I would say am considered a “7” to most men (but my BF thinks I am gorgeous) It took 3 years of wading through flakers, fakers, losers, users and catfishers, but I found my needle in a haystack.
I would say that 2 out of 3 of my never married GF’s wasted time with the wrong men. EMK always says to dump the guys who won’t commit. (or who abuse, cheat, etc.) Perhaps men waste time on “meantime girls”. You know, girls who keep their bed warm in the meantime while they look for the right girl. Men seem to think this is OK, because at least they are getting laid, but if it’s a real relationship they are looking for, they are wasting years of their lives with a “meantime girl” too.
Don’t know if any of this helps, but there are plenty of women out there who want real relationships. They all won’t want one with YOU, just as you won’t want a relationship with all of THEM, but it only takes one. Good luck in your search.
Evan Marc Katz says
Sorry for you Wade, but complaining about the opposite sex solves nothing. Complaining about online dating solves nothing. Complaining about Christianity solves nothing. You are the common denominator in your own life. No one else is to blame. So the next time you feel like venting, instead of writing a 3000 word screed on a blog for women, do it in a journal, to a friend, or with your therapist. You sound like you’re two seconds away from being the next Eliot Rodger and I hope you get the help you need.
Wade says
“game”.
It’s not a “game” to me.
You’re right, I am the common denominator in my life.
But you are wrong about “game”.
A “game” involves two people.
I show up, and I get rejected. That’s not a “game” that’s a well, in sports the analogy falls short, because there’s typically not a case where one team simply gets to say the other doesn’t get to play at all.
I don’t get allowed to “play”, if you want to use that disgusting terminology, so I don’t learn anything, then when I complain about it, I’m told it’s my own fault that I don’t know anything.
Great reasoning there. Marvelous.
That part is NOT my fault, because I can’t change you, and I can’t get “dating experience” if nobody dates me because I don’t have dating experience.
There’s something you don’t know involved, and I had added it, but I removed it because it’s not appropriate here.
To put it mildly I was sexually harassed by women, and kicked out of college because they falsely accused me of committing a sex crime against one of them, and I had proof on closed circuit camera at a Wendy’s that I was not where they said I was when they said I was.
Six on one, who would you believe?
Most people would belive the six.
A court would believe the six.
Judge Judy would believe the six.
Six out of a room of roughly 20 gave false police reports against me, and nobody defended me.
Nobody.
If not for a camera in Wendy’s proving I wasn’t where they all said I was, I’d probably be in prison for a felony that never happened, all because of some evil girls “prank”.
That was 4 years ago. I thought I was helping myself by going to this local community college, instead I’m out 7k and a tarnished reputation, and a ruined credit score.
What do you think now?
That’s the less embarrassing version, and that’s not the first time.
Traveller says
Wade,
I can’t address everything you said, but most of it is indeed accurate. Online dating is an incredibly frustrating experience for most men, unless you are one of the lucky 5% that won the genetic lottery and are tall, handsome and, hopefully, rich.
I hear the frustration and anger, and all I can say is that you need to find another outlet for it because expressing it in any kind of a dating situation will just make things worse.
I sympathize, and honestly, my best suggestion would be to try something else, since obviously online seems to be a dead end. I can’t tell you exactly what that would be, but you’re sure not the first guy I know who has had to give up on OLD, and you probably won’t be the last.
Sorry, I know that wasn’t much help.
Evan Marc Katz says
http://www.findingtheoneonline.com
Don’t complain online dating sucks if you’re not going to do anything to improve your experience. This product is for women AND men.
SparklingEmerald says
I met my BF on match.com. I think he is very sexy, but he is not tall and he is not rich.(He’s not an unemployed dwarf either) I know another couple who met on match. Both fairly attractive people, but the hubby is not particularly tall and I have no idea what his income is. But from what I can see they are very happy.
Contrary to what you might think, my checklist is not tall, rich and looks like a model. My guy has everything on my checklist. However my “check list” consists of 1. Treats me well 2. Emotionally available/relationship oriented 3. Healthy lifestyle 4. I am DEFINITELY attracted to him, never had to talk myself into it, not even for a nano-second. 5. We feel HAPPY in each other’s presence. So yes, I had my “check list” but I think it’s a fairly reasonable one, and I don’t think I am the only woman on the planet.
Happy trumps all in my book. I don’t give a rat’s eyelash about TALL or RICH. What good are they if the guy makes me feel miserable ?
Wade says
On the dork/geek thing.
I don’t tend to have any sexual chemistry with other people like that.
It tends to divulge into a bunch of facts and figures, or theorycrafting about something, and I’m already too much in my own head regarding such things, so that’s not going to help me in all likelihood. It runs the risk of making my problem worse in fact.
You know, I’ll take that part of your advice, but I’ve tried this sort of thing before. Not the same site, but whatever.
The “activity” becomes a distraction from the intentions of being social.
I solve N-body equations in my notebook between classes, by hand, because that’s what I felt like doing that day, and I might write a program to do it faster some day, or I might never explore it again. That’s just the way I am. This is in regards to galaxy merger simulation, for example.
Yeah, not conducive to dating behavior.
Maybe it won’t be lke that, I’m just not sure where the passion about people is going to be digging through all the pedantic knowledge in my head and hers.
I’m worrying about that, but it’s true.
Evan Marc Katz says
“I don’t tend to have any sexual chemistry with other people like that.”
And women don’t have sexual chemistry with you for the same reason. N-body equations are not hot to most women, even if intellect itself is.
Your issue is confidence/self-awareness, moreso than being a nerd. Thus, you can either remain nerdy/celibate/blaming women and narrow your search to women who are attracted to sad/frustrated/angry/socially insecure…OR you can take on the responsibility of being the kind of guy that more women would respond to. I actually think the answer is both. You can largely stay true to who you are and you can join MENSA and find more likeminded people. But getting angry at cheerleaders who aren’t attracted to nerds, when you’re not attracted to nerds either seems pretty futile, no?
starthrower68 says
Well, at least I don’t feel so odd now for being stoked about Ken Burns’ documentary on the Roosevelts. ðŸ˜
Jackie says
I really enjoyed reading everyone’s comments. A lot of real truth here. I am 60. I am healthy, fairly nice looking and very down to earth. Have met some nice people online and even had some relationships.
OK- here is where I stand- tons of odd scammers-language is stilted, photos are fake, and not to offend Christians, their is usually some overbearing language about being a Good Christian Man wanting a Good Christian Woman. I am not sure what this is about… Also in my profile writing I state who I am and what my belief systems are- how do people that are the exact opposite of who I am and what I believe in send me a message. ( This is on top of the 95% of profiles having no description of who and what they are about. )
My biggest issue- HEALTH. I find that a great amount of men over 50 are simply not healthy- there is no way that I am looking a very heavy man and he is telling me “loves to go to the gym 5 times a week”, “runs or bikes marathons” – whatever.
And along with the health issue is the sex issue. If you are not healthy, you are not great sexually.
If there were some way beyond meeting people besides online dating sites I would . I do not want to hear join a club, look at church bla bla bla. It is not easy to find someone, and having been married, raised 3 children to great adulthood- I simply want someone to be a good friend and lover- not negotiate someone’s lack of money, poor sex and caretaking that is not reciprocal.
Kristin says
Men like that have no excuse.I am a working single mum with teenagers, and I still workout 3-4. times a week.The 3s chasing 8-10’s on daring apps are pitiful lol.
Rizerax says
Just reading through the comments, I see a lot of guys going “I’m doing everything right, why aren’t I getting any responses?”. I understand, but at the same time, a lot of the same guys continue their complaint and it turns into a either a whine or how something’s wrong with the woman. I would encourage those guys specifically to make sure that hasn’t bled into your online dating profile or any of your messages. Maybe you are bitter because you are doing everything right, but if that mindset of exasperation oozes into any thing the woman can see or read, you’ve already lost the game. Overall, women aren’t dumb and they can read between the lines. They don’t care if you really are a nice guy who will treat them right, when they can pick up right away that you’re angry, tired, bitter, or frustrated.
Would you want to date a woman that came across as defensive or bitter in her profile or message? If you wouldn’t, they why would she? Always keep in mind that the new messages your are sending out don’t know anything about you, make sure you are really putting your best foot forward.
Andy says
A lot of women go on those sites for casual hookups but don’t want to admit it.
Also ladies, If you want a serious committed relationship, don’t become a professional dater. Guys don’t want to get serious with a woman who has been handled more than the fresh produce at your local grocery store.
Clare says
Must be one of the most self-righteous comments I’ve seen on this blog in a long time.
“Guys don’t want to get serious with a woman who has been handled more than the fresh produce at your local grocery store.”
Maybe women wouldn’t want to get serious with someone so judgmental? How is it his business anyway, who she’s dated or how many guys she’s dated as long as she is being honest about the things he needs to know?
Guys who want to marry a virgin, or close, better be sure that they are able to uphold this ridiculous standard themselves.
starthrower68 says
Yours and similar comments are tiresome and annoying. The majority of the culture supports and engages in casual sex. At the very least, everyone wants to “test drive” each other before they can decide if the other is at least commitment worthy. Which way do you want it?
Jonesy says
Further to EmeraldDust’s comments – just had the same experience and it has happened before. You find a string of belligerent emails in the morning from a (supposedly) drunk, angry, bitter man who was compelled to lash out at 2 in the morning. My profile and pictures show that I’m clearly a polished, professional, career driven woman. The men that send such messages are usually intimidated by women like us.
I think one has to keep in mind that online dating can mess with your head if you let it. Consider that it’s an excellent vehicle for those men who would normally not approach a woman in public, to contact whomever they want, and say whatever they want. The reverse is true of women.There are a lot of lonely people out there, and they are desperate for interraction. If you choose to date online you’re going to have to put up with a lot of nonsense.
Match.com clearly does not screen all profiles, and I’m quite sure they don’t take disciplinary action against those that are reported. I’m also convinced the only matching criteria they adhere to is woman seeking man. I’ve received thousands of matches from men aged 18 to 70 from all over North America, even though I’m a 55 year old woman seeking men aged 50 to 60 within 50 miles of my location. Having said that, it is flattering to be contacted by a man 15 years my junior, and there are a few gems in the masses. As my daughter wisely said, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince.
phill williams says
That makes sense i feel better, now and not so much like a prick when i did nothing wrong. But send a friend request on meet me..I didn’t even say anything, i wont till i see if they accept my request…But to just block me is kinda extreme..They don’t wanna accept then don’t! But don’t just block me until i least message again when they do not reply back to me .
Al says
A woman’s best friend in online dating is the ability to filter who sees her profile. It sucks that it usually costs extra, but it is SO worth it. Match allows you to decide who you’d like to reveal yourself to. I’m sure others have this option as well. It’s really the only way to find the gems amidst all the muck and keep out those guys who spam every women who appears without even reading her profile.
Of course, you won’t get the all the attention and validation some women seem to seek. Not every guy you message will write you back and you have to be willing to accept that, but it gives you a much more realistic idea as to who is really compatible with you. If you keep your expectations within reason it’s a very effective way around the typical problems women find online.
JennLee says
I totally agree with you that filtering is a great tool, but like most tools, it van be used improperly. I also disagree that it gives you a much more realistic idea as to who is really compatible with you. What it can do is allow you to filter out those who are actually compatible with you. For instance, suppose a woman is a 6 or 7 in looks, and she gets messages from guys all over the scale, including 5s thru 10s. She may then feel that she is wasting time with messages with guys who are not an 8 or above. This would be the sites that allow people to be rated for attractiveness. However, she may have just filtered out the men who would actually marry her.
Or, she may get messages from men who are many different ages, so she may decide that since man men 1 to 10 years younger than her, are also messaging her, she will only allow messages from that age range to make it to her inbox. However, she may have filtered out all of the men who would actually marry her. I have a friend who would have missed out on the love of her life if she were allowed to filter in the way she wanted to. She had set her age preference to 28 to 35, and she was 36. She certainly had the looks to attract guys all the way down to 18, so she was getting plenty of messages from guys in her preferred range. However, she was also getting messages from guys who were 36 to 50. The truth is that most of the men in all age ranges were not able to capture her attention enough to get a response from her. However, a 41yo and a 43yo did. After awhile, she went on dates with both and liked both so much that she continued dating both. She was honest about continuing to date until she was mutually exclusive with someone. Both ended up asking her to be exclusive, so she had to make a choice. She ended up choosing the 43yo, and they are both very happy, going on 9 years together. Had she been able to filter guys so that only those in her age preference could see her profile, she would have never met the love of her life.
The truth is, we women are often the dating equivalent of Cousin Eddie from the vacation movies. Remember the scene where he was asked what his job was. He was unemployed, but his wife said that he was holding out for a management position. The joke being that he wasn’t management material. In the same way, we women often overestimate which men we can get. I think our grandmothers had it easier, because casual sex was less prevalent, and so was casual dating. In short, men weren’t leading women on like they are today. They weren’t as able to get sex outside of marriage, and if you were dating somebody else, other women might not want to date you, especially if you were known as a serial dater. So men were not as likely to date women they would never consider for marriage. By not engaging in casual sex, a woman was able to get a better picture of which men were actually interested in marrying her.
One of the best tools is often not utilized, even though it is usually free, and that is account verification. Things such as age, location, height, weight, and even education level can be verified. Almost nobody uses this, and I must assume the reason is that most people are telling lies on their profile.
As for the spamming, many men do this, even the good guys. We women are partly to blame for this. We are often so vague or politically correct in out profiles that men really have no idea whether we would be a good match. Also, as one friend put it, he is paying for the service, and there is no guarantee that a women will return his interest. Also, let’s face it, men experience the same thing we do, in that you may be talking to somebody, and think it is going good, but they suddenly disappear. So men use the shotgun method to find out who is interested. Then he will talk with several women who seem interested to find out who is compatible. Is there anything wrong with this? No. Would you stop accepting dates with other men just because one man is talking to you, and taking you on an occasional date? No, you will keep your options open until you reasonably feel the relationship is real and headed for mutual exclusivity. I never assume there is exclusivity. I make the man ask for it verbally. Until he asks for it, there is no exclusivity.
Al says
You have some very valid points. I think I was unclear though. When I use the “Privacy” setting on Match nobody can see my profile AT ALL unless I contact them first. I prefer to do my own screening and contact only those men who I have an interest in. Sure, it cuts way down on the options since I get zero unsolicited messages, but I’m OK with that. It makes the system manageable for me.
My method will not appeal to everyone for sure. Since I am the one making the initial contact I would have no one to blame but myself if I was being too picky and got no replies. That’s what I meant when I said this way “gives you a much more realistic idea as to who is really compatible with you.” If you aren’t being realistic about what kinds of people might return your interest you will simply receive no messages. So far, I seem to be keeping within an appropriate range and I’m very happy with the results.
Michael Everett says
The opening premise of this article is wrong and it only gets worse from there.
I know a man who has posed as a woman on a dating site, and he enjoyed it so much that he eventually decided to give it up because he’d made too many online male and female friends under false pretenses. While pretending to be a woman, he’d treat men so badly, ignore them, be brief with them, insist that “she” didn’t want any relationship, but ultimately the men were just desperately wanting a bit of human interaction because they’d been so starved by real women. And real women contacted this “woman” just for friendship. Constantly telling “her” how nice “she” was to talk to. As a man, you never get this kind of affirmation and support. Yet it was the same person down inside!! That just shows you, if you are a nice, friendly person, the way you are treated socially depends on which genitals you appear to be wearing.
As a male he suffered the most crippling depressing neglect. Women would not even open the messages he had carefully and thoughtfully crafted after searching for hours and reading her profile fully. Contrast this to the almost zero profile views that he recieved, and absolutely zero approach messages he received.
Women do not have it worse. They have it easy. They can easily ignore the distasteful messages (although this is exaggerated, and probably only with women who have highly sexualised photos) and reply to the good ones. Men don’t have this option. We still get the occasional distasteful message, ones asking for naked photos of us, treating us like sex objects, assuming that we automatically want sex and only sex, disregarding our intelligence and integrity by simply messaging “hi.” as if we’re so low on the food chain that we should thank her for her almighty generosity of three keystokes and zero acknowledgement of our unique person. And if a man tries to sit back and do nothing like women do, he will receive nothing. No matter how many university degrees he has, no matter how much he earns, no matter how many charities he has championed, no matter what level of self-enlightenment and improvement he has reached, he could be the Dalai Lama in Brad Pitt’s body and he’d be lucky to get one legitimate message a year.
Al says
I can’t tell you how many men have messaged me with only three or four key strokes. I get “Hi” and “S’Up?” messages all the time so that’s clearly not limited to one gender. Women assume that most men just want sex online because that’s the way most men online behave. I think it’s ironic that, while it’s well known that this occurs frequently, guys like you get bent out of shape at women for reacting to what your fellow men are showing us every single day. If you’re upset that women are wary of men online look to your gender mates. And it’s most definitely NOT just women who have “highly sexualized photos” getting this treatment. My photos are all very demure and it doesn’t stop guys from being wildly inappropriate. I’d say a few bad apples are spoiling the bunch for all of you except that it’s not just a few. I’ve been online for several months and I’ve encountered countless pervs and rageholics. The behavior can be pretty atrocious and I do end up shutting my profile down regularly when it gets to be too much.
You complain that women don’t read your carefully crafted messages after you have so diligently read her profile. Now this may come as a huge shock to you but women don’t owe you anything. Seriously, not a single thing. Not their time, their affection, sex, love… NOTHING. Just because YOU like HER for whatever reason, this does not obligate her to give you the time of day. There is no door prize for freakin reading her profile.
Attractive women do, in fact, get a lot of messages. It’s true. And do you know what? Every single one of the hundreds of men that are messaging that same pretty girl feel just as entitled to her time and attention as you do. Are YOU obligated to cater to every person, no matter how uninterested you are, that wants something from you? Attractive men also get plenty of messages and they are MUCH more cut throat when they have multiple women to choose from. Plenty of them simply don’t bother to respond the same way women don’t. If men overall were getting inundated by thousands of women do you honestly think they would bother writing back the less attractive ones? Not likely. Just look at how most “players” treat women.
Women that aren’t in the top tier have just as much trouble as men who aren’t. Men who are “Nines and Tens” get just as much attention online as the women who are. Things aren’t super easy for everyone else. That’s reality.
Jess says
Women are as comfortable doing online dating as men. I`m on https://kovla.com/datings/us/ trying to find my soulmate and feel ok. My intentions are honest and clear, why should I feel ashamed?
Mona says
I date on-line often and I must admit that all types of crazy awful men send me messages and I hate it. I’m a 41 year old attractive single female with a good career and the on-line dating world is getting flooded with the horrible guys that I would avoid in any public place. I work a lot and my circle of friends is very small so it was hard meeting guys so I started dating on-line thinking it would help me meet someone easier but it only opened the door to a bunch of guys who think they can use the internet as a way to meet easy women for hook-ups , casual sex and cheating. My #1 red flag is the guy who has on sunglasses in all his picture or he takes picture so far away you cannot see his face. What is he hiding from??? I’m sure it’s his wife of girlfriend…LOL My#2 red flag is guy who want to direct you to emailing him on another site but will not give you any other ways to contact him…This should always be a scary red flag he could be a serial killer or he does not want things to be traced. Do not meet anyone who does not allow you to talk to them on the phone first. My #3 red flag is guys who have a lot of shirtless pictures he is only looking for women he can sleep with because this guy cannot wait to send you a picture of his penis ..LOL. My #4 red flag is the guy who want to meet without talking on the phone or he wants to only text…He does not care to know anything about you and he bad with conversation. Just stay way it will be the worst date of you life. My #5 is the guy who has pictures of hiking, vacations, dogs, his kids, vacations, his cars and hardly any pictures of himself. This guy is trying to use everything he can think of to attract a lady..LOL. My #6 is the guy with only bathroom or pictures in the car. He is probably married and he only alone on his way to work or when he is in the bathroom. My #7 is when a guy takes picture so close to the camera you only see pieces of his face so you need a puzzle to put him together. This guy is very fat and hates the way he looks so he will only take pictures up close. This guy is also very scary looking he might crazy but very insecure. My #8 is guys who want your number without asking you anything about yourself. They provide the phone number is the first email…he is sending his number to everyone he is desperate just leave him alone. I avoid the guys that do not take the time to ask me anything about myself….
Rachel says
An average women can’t get 25 messages a day as one poster said in the okcupid experiment the average women got 40 a week. Men quit whining don’t only message women you find super attractive email those women you think you’ll find attractive.
FlowingGeisha says
I hate it when I get blocked for no reason no arguments and I feel that the option is being abused its a priveledge to use the blocking option properly. I tell the online dating website that I guess their hands are tied but they’re probably not going through shitty experiences like me if they said sorry it has no effect on me I get messaged like the guys are my friend than after one or two messages politely declines were not a match blah bla blah um judgemental already? Than i get blocked no short one or two sentences im blocking you because five fricking minutes or less to create and type that how hard is life? My questions go unanswered for anything its something totally irrelevant I asked for a name and number not crack a joke I don’t act like Dr jekyl Mr Hyde bitch maybe some guys like that from women online and risking themselves to get blocked they bring it on themselves self infliction stab themselves more won’t you guys i only end up crying and getting pissed off left with emotional consequences so it gives some guys no right to do it to me wtf happened to what guys mothers raised them with as grown men conduct your shit online properly their moms are probably embarrassed good luck on not getting a girl to date on an online dating site guys if I get dicked around I don’t think any girls around their age would love that or like it
Chris R says
I agree that the actual competition is probably around 5% of guys, but I disagree that it’s the top 5%. I think it’s probably closer to the top 1% and the very bottom 4%. See… this is my logic: The top 1% of men are the ones that the women are actually willing to talk to, but they don’t really care because, chances are, they don’t need OLD and are just there for shit’s and giggles anyway… and then they disappear. The top 1% of women are either fake or for an ego boost, but really have zero intention of responding to anyone. The bottom 4% of men are the ones who spam with penis pics and asking for sex. They are rejected by almost everyone, but the majority of women are not their target. They have no standards or morals, so they are really just fishing for the bottom 4% of women who are desperate and pitiful enough to have sex with them… and those women do exist. The remaining 95% of men and 95% of women in the middle mutually reject each other as not desirable enough. They eventually give up and cancel their accounts. So OLD is really only for those bottom feeders of society who are willing to f… anyone or anything without any thought. The rest of us should not expect any kind of success.
Blondie99 says
I am a woman who has done online dating for awhile on and off and I have finally given up for this exact reason. I actually prefer Tinder because at least on there I can choose who I want to talk to. I am not sure if all women experience this and I would be interested in hearing what kind of picture this guy used. As a fairly attractive female no one appears to look at my profile. I think they just look at the pics. And no none of these guys were bots or spam. I think that almost exclusively happens to men, I have never had that happen to me. What I do get is exactly what this man describes. Depending on the site up to 25 emails a day. Out of those 25 emails 15 have clearly not looked at my profile as they live very far away, are way too old or way too young, smoke, etc. Five are outright sexual, the things men say and 4 are just outright rude. That leaves one dude who may be a super nice guy but I rarely find attractive. Most of the guys I meet up with and talk to are men I MESSAGE. I want men to read this because I do not think that they know this. I look for men that interest me and I email them. Many don’t respond, but I just let that go. I do not follow up with multiple emails asking why they have not responded or nasty messages that they must think they are too good for me. Do the math, at this many emails a day I cannot possibly respond to everyone I’m sorry. No response means I am not interested. Or maybe give me time to respond. I cannot tell you how many men have outright taken out their anger on me for not responding. It was horrible. It would help women out if men would genuinely only email women that they match with. If you read our profiles not just looked at our pictures, and if you don’t match my criteria email someone else. That way there would be less emails in my inbox and I could focus on the few guys that emailed me that were actually a good fit. Men this is your issue, you need to fix it among yourselves but you never will, because all the men are going to email the same 10 girls on the sight that they all thing are hot.
jon says
Blondie99, You should put a disclaimer that you will only respond to Hot Guys and Attractive Men. After all, you said you matched well with a Nice Guy who was unattractive. Just have all the Ugly Men only message the Ugly Women – is that what you are saying? There’s no way you would date an unattractive guy, so they are wasting their time. In fact, there is a dating site only for Attractive People, you should check that site out.
Karen says
I have been on 3 different online sites before Match. I just joined less than a month ago. Seriously, I was ready to delete my profile this weekend. Immediately after I posted my profile, I had several men want to meet me before we had even exchange more than 1 – 2 e-mails. Or when I didn’t follow up immediately (within a day) , I would get nasty e-mails or completely drop me. I have had men who were married, or had a mugshot, try and connect with me – this was on a Christian site. I had guys texting me every couple of hours, telling me how beautiful I was. One guy I failed to respond to a text and I never heard of him again. Even though “he felt that we had a lot in common.” Than Sunday night, instead of deleting my profile. I re-wrote it. I was really nervous to post it, because it was me and very open and honest Online dating focuses more on preferences, not one’s standard’s. The things that matter the most in the relationship are glossed over in the check box category. To me, one’s spirituality is very important to me. That was the main reason why my marriage failed – we were not morally on the same page. That is why I am very skeptical about online dating. I knew when I re-posted it, my ego would take a hit. The winks, likes, favs and e-mails would definitely drop. I knew that men who had been pursuing me, who I was somewhat interested would probably never contact me again. I said my number one priority is God, he is my first passion etc … Than I said I am not here for a hook up, fling, or get it out of my system type thing. I wanted to meet friends, be friends and become friends. And friends I do not disrespect. Ultimately I want a husband not a boyfriend. But it did not mean I would elope in a moment’s notice. My e-mails were definitely less after I edited my profile, but I met more real men, fewer but had more open deeper conversations. In fact, I met one from my church. Still in beta stage but my conclusion thus far is what you put out is what you get back. If you are vague, you will attract a lot of men who will want to fill in the blanks with their baggage, fantasies and other things! I might just make it to the 3 month mark this time without deleting my profile!
DeeGee says
I have found online dating to be as big a minefield, if not bigger, than regular dating.
Younger photos, profiles that contain who they think they are but not who they actually are (most people don’t self-examine well), and messages from some pretty weird people with a variety of issues.
I had a discussion a short time ago (yes, in person with a girl I met through online dating 🙂 ) about how many people put more personal information into their profiles than they would ever tell anyone on the first date.
I find that looking at a shopping list of who they say they are rarely gives me any feelings of interest or attraction. Not like a real face-to-face first meet interaction would.
Online dating to me seems to have become the “super-sized mate shopping” of our modern technological social system. Can I copyright that? 🙂
Kim says
I’ve been divorced for 8 years and really have no other way to meet men other than online. I have become jaded with dating because of what I’ve encountered. We have those men who want NSA sex or just want to be FWB, men my age just don’t want to commit anymore, those who think you are interested and dick pics then you get the ones who actually ask you out for drinks (evidently dinner is out of the question now) and I usually don’t get second dates. When I do have a first encounter it feels like it turned into nothing but a job interview. Romance, chivalry and conversation have just died! And it’s very sad.
DeeGee says
Kim said: “I’ve been divorced for 8 years … I have become jaded with dating”
I think that a large percentage of people have become jaded with dating.
Including the divorced men who are around your age group.
Most men will have been taken to the cleaners in their first marriage (I know this from personal experience). I’ve been divorced since ’97.
and said: “men my age just don’t want to commit anymore … evidently dinner is out of the question now”
If he is divorced, paid both party’s legal fees, is paying alimony and/or child-support, and living in an apartment while she got the house and car, then your chance of getting someone who can or will give a big first date with dinner and all of the trimmings is going to be a rare find.
Most good/nice guys are going to be well guarded on any first dates after a divorce.
It took me a long time to recover from divorce costs. All of the women I have met through online dating have also only been lunch and drinks or coffee. A few have been second dates, but I figured out after the first date that they had already friend-zoned me on the first one and were simply looking for some male companionship and someone to pick up the bill. Thanks, but I’m not in any hurry to repeat that.
and said: “Romance, chivalry and conversation have just died!”
Are your first date expectations simply too great?
I wouldn’t expect any of that until at least a second or third date in these times.
Unless you happen to find one of the top 10% income men to date.
Ha me says
The good thing about online dating is that you can delete the sexual perverts in a mouse click.Alessandra says
Guys, I have agoraphobia and managed to meet a real human being (sane, employed, not a misogynist, handsome, clothed…) in meat space. What is wrong with you folks? Are you all such social rejects that you can’t form a human connection? Would it kill you to put down the tech toys and say hello to a person? Would it kill you to look in another human being’s eyes and see not just a reflection of yourself and your desires; but see them and theirs as well?
If this is the human race, I’ll call myself a marmoset gladly and bow out of this disgusting clusterfuck of a species forever. I will always remember this day as the day I realized how truly pathetic some people are. Seriously! Diagnosed agoraphobic! I’m literally afraid of people and being out there with them! What the fuck, folks? There is something profoundly wrong with all of you. Get therapy and go talk to strangers in the park. It’ll do you some good; way more good than any of your dating profiles ever have.
AME says
Alessandra your comment is by far the most intelligent thing I have heard here and I totally agree with you. People need to stop blaming others and take responsibility. Life is not that hard we make it that way.
rob says
I decided to join a dating site recently and before i paid, i had lots of nice girls wanting to talk to me or just chat or coffee, so i signed up paid my $ , and can’t get one responce from anybody, i think this site was all fembots, i even tried to send 10 emails to random women just to give me a yes or no if they even received my message, nothing. I am a nice guy , not needy , just want to talk to some one, again nothing. very frustrating and i think controlling. plus i noticed some of the girls were on other sites from different areas. i must not be the only guy with this problem. yes be careful , pay your money and nothing, there should be a law against that.
JenC says
Fembots, LOL. Love the cultural reference.
Irene says
To the men saying they receive a very small number of responses versus how many messages they send: Have you considered that many female profiles are fake?
My friend ,who is happily married, found out there was a profile made with her image on a dating site. In fact her image was a cover image for advertising the site, without her permission. This is because images published online no longer belong to the person, but the site , and they can use that image.
Noting responses above ,they seem to be stating that there are men seeking NSA and hookups. I myself experienced this and the disgraceful behaviour that follows.
Then there are the prostitutes. Well they are in the right place because of all the men seeking hookups. Because of my experiences I stopped online dating. I live in a small community, I don’t want to be seen as a possible prostitute. Even going on the few dates I did try, that was what the men were looking for, only they wanted to buy a $20 meal for the sex exchange.
Now women have mostly given up on dating through websites, but their profiles linger. Or , because of social standards, they can only comfortably meet and converse with one man at a time. I tried juggling conversation with 5 men once, conversation only via telephone and text. The attitude of men that became aware of this was that I was a whore.
Then you have the man that HAS to have your undivided attention at all free moments in your life. Uhgh. That becomes a burden. I would rather deal with a man that is confident to know I have my own interest in contact with him, rather than have him forcefully wedged himself into every crack of my free time.
Also because of the hassles compared to cost on these sites, I could spend the money on more constructive tasks that take less of my time. Really , I don’t know where they find the time to contact so many women in such small windows of time as 24 hours. The Ashley Madison reports that were leaked substantiated that there were thousands of men to hundreds of women, and most of those women were prostitutes. I’m sorry to the men that have been led to believe there were women just waiting to date them on the other end of the wire, because it just isn’t real.
In most cases,there are women waiting at home for a man they know in real life to call them, and sadly in this day and age, they are setting for hookups with the men they know in real life, and don’t look for that online.
I have given up on dating at all anymore. I am tired of it. I’m tired of gossip and male abuse. I don’t want hookups. I have stopped having conversations with men that are not in my immediate circle of work or school.
Am I holding all men accountable? Yes. Thank you Evan for humbly accepting this responsibility, I wish more men would.
HollyTx says
If an online guy came immediately out and said in message 1, I like your picture, I don’t really care about you as a person all that much or your day, here is my address, here is the menu of sex acts I want, and then after I am finished with you, I don’t plan to ever text you again unless I want a repeat – then I would be fine with that message! This is a NSA Hookup and I can delete without one more second thought. I’m not sure they would get a lot of takers, but at least they are being honest! So if an online guy is honest about wanting a NSA hookup – then don’t bash him, just don’t show up if that’s not what you want. At least he is being honest and not attempting to deceive you and take advantage of you or waste half an hour of your time. I’m not sure you can really say that a guy is doing anything wrong with that message.
It’s not the NSA desire that offends me, it’s when deception is initially used that is offensive and demeaning and sucks the life out of your day. If someone sends a, hi how are you message, then replies with what are you doing, and then do you spit or swallow – that is when I’m mad. I have wasted my time reading the profile, sending multiple messages, and now this! Times that by hundreds and it is toxic to one’s day. It’s really the part of the online dating that makes me feel ashamed to be involved with it in the first place. Everyone know this goes on in online dating so it’s basically admitting that one is willing to endure being chewed on by the rats.
TheWorldIsMine says
Women are full of s*** and this article only proves it. I don’t understand why women are so upset over receiving unwanted messages, simply delete/block and move on. Even if they didn’t receive explicit or hostile messages women still couldn’t be pleased. “Hi” would not be good enough for women, they need a full essay just to consider responding. Well I got news for you women, nobody is writing you an essay or even read your profile just to be ignored. Honestly I’m not even sure if us good men would waste our time with online dating when there is plenty of women in real life. So have fun women with your online dating and the lot of perverts you have to select from, and keep wondering why you are resorting to the desperation of online dating to begin with. Here’s a hint… it’s because nobody likes a b**** anymore than a whore. 😉
Kristen says
Awwww what’s the matter, sunshine?.Didnt snag that supermodel you’re so convinced that you deserve ?:) lol.
Darryl K. says
I don’t think it’s all that bad for the women. Even though most of them get a tsunami of messages from guys, they still turn down the good guys mostly because of looks. The guy could have 100% perfect personality for a particular woman but it’s always attraction that gives him a chance with that woman. Most profiles I’ve read want a ‘good guy’ but doesn’t mention that maybe he should look like the guy who plays Thor in the Marvel movies. So she skips the man with a great personality with average looks and on to Thor who seems nice..in the beginning but turns out to be a lizard at the end of the day. So I don’t think they have it that bad, I think sometimes women make questionable choices on a dating site.
michael belt says
I have an idea! Women should be clear in what they want and then be prepared to act on it. Men would ‘step up but women act like men should expect to be rejected. Wrong, most men have dealt with women before and they’ve learned to stay away from them. The ‘average’ American woman is too unattractive to make the effort worthwhile and we men are sick to death of being rejected by people we can barely stand to look at. American women are beyond spoiled. If the choice is between a good steak, polished off with a good beer and some cool ‘man movie’, the female is invited to the door everytime. Bu bye; thanks for playing..
bongstar420 says
These guys want to be treated like Chad
Get a clue. She is not an equal opportunity bitch
Lucas Warner says
You see…. This is what bothers me. Yes you are right. Men think women have it easy. Within hours they get loads of attention, rather rude or not. Message after message; And even though they are mostly crude sexual advances over the internet, women know they are wanted. This gives women the freedom of choice. They look at profiles and depending on the guys pictures and/or profile description send a reply. The ball will always be in their park.
I as a man have quite the opposite. I am slim, light skinned mixed race, with about a 6/10 looking face. I don’t get the attention, and that ruins my self esteem. I too have made a fake account to see what women really get. I would be much more satisfied with filtering through horrible crude messages, that I would consider a horrible form of spam, to find the right message from a good person. Instead, I see people check my profile out and never send me a message. It ruins self esteem. By the time I do get a message I am so desperate to even talk to someone on here and feel slightly accomplished, that that person turns out to be a horrible match. I have POF premium. I see who reads my stuff and deletes my stuff. It makes me mad when i send a nice long carefully crafted message that in no way applies to anything crude, rude or sexual, and I see its status saying “Unread Deleted”. I’m no bad guy, I don’t have a crazy profile description. It just sucks.
So before you go thinking women have it bad or worse then us, read this.
Jo says
Women get lots of viewings too, often by the same guys and no messages….. guess what he’s doing !
I dabbled my toes into online dating a few years ago and got sick of the narcissists, the fantasists, the commitment phoebes, the unresolved emotional issue-ists, those who couldn’t take a polite no thank you and those with over inflated egos and just looking for sex.
I spent a few months sharing a house with a couple of guys who were into on line dating and it gave me a real wake up listening to their conversations. They would ask me what they should write, and what a woman wanted to hear and they never had any genuine intention of actually getting to know any of the women they saw/slept with, they only wanted sex. I felt really sorry for the ladies they would bring back, who got dumped after he’d got what he wanted and never had a reply to their messages.
Recently I thought I’d have another look online, out of curiosity. This time I wrote that I wanted to meet someone and get to know someone slowly, to allow trust and friendship to grow so if all they wanted was someone to have sex with -forget it. Normally I would get viewings and requests for contacts etc straight away, from most of them. This time although I got lots of viewings, I only got a single message from one person too far away, in a whole flippin week! That just about sums it up.
So, my conclusion is, whilst there may be some really genuine guys out there, they are few and far between. Most of the ones you will find online are shallow superficial sleezebags who see women as something to use, wouldn’t know how to respect a woman as an equal if you paid them and don’t deserve to be given the time of day.
Tyrone says
“Women get lots of viewings too, often by the same guys and no messages….. guess what he’s doing”
Contemplating if he wants to send you a message? Hoping that you’ll send him one?
“I dabbled my toes into online dating a few years ago and got sick of the narcissists, the fantasists, the commitment phoebes, the unresolved emotional issue-ists, those who couldn’t take a polite no thank you and those with over inflated egos and just looking for sex.”
There are some women online displaying those same qualities. I chose to ignore them.
“I spent a few months sharing a house with a couple of guys who were into on line dating and it gave me a real wake up listening to their conversations. They would ask me what they should write, and what a woman wanted to hear and they never had any genuine intention of actually getting to know any of the women they saw/slept with, they only wanted sex. I felt really sorry for the ladies they would bring back, who got dumped after he’d got what he wanted and never had a reply to their messages.”
Apparently, two men are a very accurate representation of all men.
“Recently I thought I’d have another look online, out of curiosity. This time I wrote that I wanted to meet someone and get to know someone slowly, to allow trust and friendship to grow so if all they wanted was someone to have sex with -forget it. Normally I would get viewings and requests for contacts etc straight away, from most of them. This time although I got lots of viewings, I only got a single message from one person too far away, in a whole flippin week! That just about sums it up.”
I tried online dating for years. Across different sites. You got one message in a whole week!?! I received 3 initial emails from women. Ever. 2 were half way across the country, One was 7 months pregnant. I didn’t expect women to message me first, so I wasn’t particularly upset about it. I can tell you which types of profiles I chose not respond to though. If there were height requirements, I didn’t respond. If they said they weren’t looking for anything serious, I didn’t respond. If they said they were looking for friends first, I didn’t respond. I wasn’t on dating sites looking for friends. If they said they didn’t want to hear from liars, cheaters and players, I didn’t respond. Liars and cheaters aren’t going to not lie and not cheat because you asked them to in a profile. So reading that made me think that the profile creator either had a propensity to fall for such things, or was lacking common sense. If the profile said “just ask”, I didn’t respond. If fields were marked “prefer not to say”, I didn’t respond. There are already enough surprises in dating. If they mentioned anything about all men doing something, being or not being something, or asked where the real men were, I didn’t respond. If they mentioned being closed off of guarded because they’ve been hurt in the past like almost every other adult has been, I didn’t respond.
“So, my conclusion is, whilst there may be some really genuine guys out there, they are few and far between. Most of the ones you will find online are shallow superficial sleezebags who see women as something to use, wouldn’t know how to respect a woman as an equal if you paid them and don’t deserve to be given the time of day.”
If you already think that, how is anyone going to change your mind? I had a chance to speak with a couple of women that were using dating sites – similar to you’re story about the two men you spent some time with. One day they were both upset and comparing the gross and terrible emails they’d gotten from various men. I don’t condone anyone sending sexual or hateful emails. But those weren’t the ONLY types of emails they received. I read some perfectly find emails in their inbox. There were even a few that were lengthy and well worded. When I asked about those, both ladies told me that the men were either “ugly”, “goofy”, or “short”. Would you call them shallow and superficial also?
I knew a women that went on 3-4 dates a week for a while. Nothing wrong with going on lots of dates. But it was also a lot of free food and entertainment for her, which she admitted was very nice. Would you say that she was a sleazebag that just saw men as something to use?
I briefly dated a woman stood me up after confirming our date was still on about an hour before we were scheduled to meet for her birthday outing. She went back to her physically abusive ex. I know this because she called me 3 days later – after he had beat the crap out of her. She asked if I’d give her another chance. I said no. She yelled and call me an asshole told me that I was just like all of the other men. Like you, she must have felt like genuine guys were few and far between too.
Buck25 says
Tyrone,
I tried to think of anything I could add to the above, but I think you pretty well covered it. Well said!
Jermanicus says
Maybe its better the creeps and weirdos explain themselves early on.
Sandra Young says
This was so right on ! Thank you , you described the perfect online dating experience for a woman !! In the beginning I would delete and retreat … but now I have a better hold on the jerks and stay out of the “weeds” ! It takes some time to sift through the slime to find the treasures … I come to meet “a few good men” and always encouraged by them … especially in comparison to the ones I’ve already met offline …
JenC says
After the stalker, the cheapskate, the alcoholic (who brought whisky on the date), and Captain America, I’ve decided I am done with online dating. I’ve had all the experiences described above. Being single is not a problem for me. If I meeting someone fine, but if I don’t, fine too. I prefer singlehood to all the negative energy that came into my life through OLD. There were nice guys, too, but the return on investment of my time just wasn’t worth it.
al says
You’re part of the problem you fool, wasting people’s time with your silly sad experiments
just2good4u2comprehend says
Yes. I have had too many of those. I have tried different sites only to experience even more heartbreak. Until recently, I realized online is a very scary place. Guys can be someone they really aren’t and that’s no fair to many of us women. I happen to go on Craigslist just to look and after three times hooking up its got me in a legal battle fighting for my life. This man posted he wanted a relationship and he didn’t care as long as she kept her self up. Hmm. He said he owns his own business and he has his own house. Hmm. Well on initial meet he really wasn’t my type. Thought I’d see what was in store. It was about sex as always before. Some how I could always get away. This time I couldn’t I really thought ok maybe he’s different until he reposted the same post saying “white type ” white type? Exactly what’s that mean? I am white. That was one strike. We happened to get together that same night. He was like I own you. You do as I say on and on and on. The texts always reverted back to his counter part below. Is this what I’m here for? I hope not and I told him this. He agreed but after a few days it became very noticeable it wasn’t going anywhere. The third day I stayed there was supposed to stay all week long. However, the phone was upside down and the sex wasn’t passionate it was very physically abusive where he choked me. I could t breath. The tears rolled down my eyes as I felt the air leaving me. He jumped off, waited a few minutes then choked me again, same response then tells me lol you have to do is tap me on the shoulder. I had no strength in me to push him off. He rolled over and went to bed it was a long night I layed there wondering what I signed up for. Long story short I left for the weekend came back got texts he’s going send my pic to work and threats. I try to defend myself and he claims im
harras him. Someone calling him. Etc and posting stuff. Well I’m with my guy friends so it’s not me. Then he meets me takes me to a wooded junk yard and forces me to have sex stating I’m his property now. As we get back to my house he opens the glove compartment and has my pic cut out and pulls some paper out stating I sent them via facebook and posted them on his friends page. I didn’t we argue he tries to throw me out the moving car. Then makes a scene in front of my house. Next day I text him he is a fraud he puts posts to get sex and abuse women. He files a restraining order all lies. I go to court I get a restraining order. Next thing I know I get a letter stating he is filing charges on me for violations of restraining order. I don’t know how I deleted him and I have every text. The police wouldn’t take my report said I might have enticed him. Not sure how. I didn’t send pic as he requested and I didn’t ask to go be assaulted in junk yard. Now I’m fighting for my life my liberty and keeping my job and a clean record over a man who has a record and wants to destroy me over his lies.
Most men online lie. Lie they make up stories never again
OnlineFestivus says
This is silly. Women have it easier end of. This article is simply embellishing the dire straits of women for clicks.
I even posed as a woman on online dating after being curious about the other side and after the initial flood of emails it became a steady stream of followers, offers and proposals, basically this woman was a celebrity. Although I will admit that I used pics of an upper tier female, blonde, thin, young and surrounded by sorority type friends, the fact of the matter remained that women have it loads easier online than men by any metric you can measure.
The female I used was literally offered cash to show up to appointed times for dates, offered gifts sent to her in the mail, offered trips and on and on. My email box had to be cleared from the endless full box notifications that I was getting. I can see why in this day and age an attractive woman could easily rake in $100,000 a year simply working the heartstrings of men online that is how lopsided the dating game has become and how much pull an attractive woman has in Western nations. Posing as a female I did feel the need to “sh%t test” them as people call it, but not maliciously as it has become in the West. The testing is important only to see if the guy knows how to converse, it is not meant to identify faults of a guy and bolt as Western women seem to use it. Western women use sh%t testing like a scorpion strike. When I would toss out a verbal barb or two at a guy I understood that this was meant to get the conversation going, not to cut the guy down for, say, having a karate outfit in his photo. I felt sorry for the men after a while because they had no clue the volume of competition they were up against. Most of them appeared to never have had a beautiful female in their lives. Some of them had weird quirks like they claimed to enjoy giving women presents for free. They reeked of desperation, horniness and sadness. But deep down I understood it was the modern age female, in her endless condemnation and pickiness, who have created these men. The modern dating realm is an absolute joy for (white) women and a total nightmare for men.
When I read blogs and articles of women lambasting males for not being chivalrous enough online I can only laugh. First of all I know from what I saw that most males don’t explode for no reason online. Often the female will tease and tempt the guy into thinking he has an opportunity then turn around and snatch away the offer. This tactic would infuriate anybody. Secondly in my time online posing as a woman I felt compelled to be apologetic for not giving out phone numbers or accepting dates, namely because she was fake, but also as a way to spare the suitor’s feelings. I was courteous to most of the males and they simply let it be. I never received a blow up from these endings. Through these dialogues I learned that most women don’t treat men with courtesy online and instead treat them like a flood of nerds that they are able to mock out of basic principle for wanting sex. Having to put up with heartless flakes, two-timers and manipulators in a situation where you need the other person in order to advance in life can undercut anyone’s ego.
Race. As far as race was concerned there was a strange superiority complex that occurred when I posed as a white female. The shit tests became one of me mocking the immaturity of the black and brown guys that emailed me. As if they were going out of bounds when they dared to email me for my presence in either virtual or physical form. It basically brought out the colonial queen in the female profile. Honestly I felt that I had to double check my cruelty with minorities. Doing so made me realize how culturally imposed the superiority/inferiority model is leveled onto minorities in this country. I can’t imagine how a beautiful white chick with no empathy on these sites treat these guys. If I instinctively had to second guess my responses to these brown and black guys who I immediately put lower on the hierarchy of suitors, I can only fantasize the absolute cruelty, vanity and spuriousness that these guys have withstood from less polite white chicks. Needless to say I actually didn’t receive as many messages from minorities as I would have thought. I guess my look was out of their league.
Females. I also would flirt with other females, particularly the ones who claimed to be open to both males and females. Let me just say this now. Most women only claim that they are bisexual as an advertising tactic to lure in males. Like I said before the woman I used as my profile pic was exceptionally pretty, almost a beauty queen. Most of the women I attempted to get a date from were polite, but I suspect were intimidated by my looks-level as the conversation would peter out. The other girls, particularly brunettes, seemed as if they wanted access to the circle of guys that were in my photos. There were very few true lesbians. Almost all of the females were hunting for that hot guy and were scanning each other’s cliques for ones that they wanted. They only pretended to be into girls as a pretense to getting closer to the jock guy in the photo. The discourse was a lot more polite however. Both sides seemed to regard each other with a basic personhood, which I feel was stripped from the males when dealing with them, I could almost walk right over many of them. The talk between my fake female profile and other females was probably what dating was like for men in the 50’s and 60’s. This is why many of those older men cannot relate to what is happening to modern males. May God help the men of today.
Anyway this article put up by Evan Marc Katz is a sham meant to placate his female readers that is for sure. In reality what would help is to give a much more lucid assessment of female options and call them out on their eccentricities. As I’ve learned most women who end up making it a point to bash men for being creeps or raging monsters comes from the female not playing fairly in the first place and conveniently hiding that detail when searching for sympathy. So here goes:
1. Women literally have a massive pool of males to choose from, if not from their present location then simply consider moving. 2. The job market favors attractive women above everyone else, less attractive women however have similar options so there will always be opportunities wherever they move to. There literally is no joblessness for young thin attractive women in this country so you could go anywhere and thrive off of the proceeds developed by men. 3. Women should give their jobs up for a man if they really want one, their grandmothers did and they were okay. 4. There is an endless supply of suitors online who want women in their lives. When a woman complains that she is afraid that the men she will meet will only want sex it means that the female believes that she cannot threaten the types of men that she wants with her online dating options (basically she is shooting for a rich guy and is concerned that she cannot threaten him with leaving.) 5. Complaints about online dating, tinder dating, bar dating by women come from females who are timid, scared, selfish and want the universe to present males to them in storybook or hollywood movie fashion without an ounce of risk on their part while reaping all of the rewards. They are basically the armchair critics of the dating world who often don’t do enough but complain to the sky. Girls who are picky or racist and too afraid to date someone different for fear of “judgement” fall in this category. Girls who get thrills from rejecting males fall in this category as well. It’s all a type of ego protection. 6. Making outrageous demands from men only means that when they put up, you better be prepared to settle up. Many women demand physical features and material items from their chosen guys, if the man gains the thing you demand out of them be prepared to ready the anal lube for his efforts; snatching away implied or promised casual sex opens the door for angry retaliation no matter who you are. And no we don’t feel sorry for you if you encounter a raging male in response. You are the one who created that situation through your cowardly manipulations. 7. Don’t expect real sympathy from the outside world when your attempt at manipulating men fails. No matter how many blogs you retreat to bash the dating scene men are wising up. The male commentors knock you down because they can see that many of these pleas for sympathy after encountering evil men or pleas to “regulate men on the Internet” usually are ways for the female to feel less guilty about failing to manipulate the man in the first place. Most of the male blowback found on internet sites are caused by women exerting vile, narcissistic assessments of the males and not giving them a hint of their personhood. Sure there are tons of men that are ignored as well and that is equally bad, but if they keep messaging you understand this is because they saw something good in you. 8. Reward persistence with kindness.
That is the best advice I can give for the online dating worlds.
anon says
That’s hard to follow up, but all true. What I have found is most women using dating sites is for nothing but merely to boost their egos and self esteem or the shear pleasure they get from all the ones they shoot down. Some can be picked out quite easily by the number of pics they have up and how much skin they are showing. These types just seek attention & nothing more and the sites are ckock full of them. I’d conservatively say over 90%…shocking truth!
I posted a profile mainly to get women’s feedback on their online dating experience…needless to say only a few responded, but those were not the one’s I really wanted to hear from. I wanted to hear from the really attractive one’s. I pointed out that most women are just playing cat & mouse games and have no serious intentions of ever getting off of these dating sites, and if you think otherwise you’re in for a big surprise…sure there are some who are seriously searching for a means to end their online dating, but these are far & few between. I also pointed out how they will send you flirts etc and when you respond they ignore you….basically yankin your chain….as if they don’t already get enough interest they have to go after the average guys that don’t really stand a chance in hell and then take the bait back.
Women in general are like a sister hood infact are, they all stick together and cover each other, so even if you tell another woman what you have experienced, they will rarely admit that a woman would do such a thing and they view as an attack on all women.
Steve says
Five stars and two thumbs up for your trenchant and insightful reply, because this is exactly what women who use OLD are like. Immature brats who just want to play childish games. It’s downright mean, selfish and unkind behavior and speaks volumes as to what women are really like.
This is why women pull the NAWALT (‘Not All Women are Like That’) card when called out on their bad behavior.
They know the complaints are valid, so they try to use shaming language to try to defeat the validity of the argument rather than cleaning up their act.
I mean, it’s so much better and easier for the pot to call the kettle black than own up to one’s own failings, isn’t it?
Women are masters at projection and deflection and always blame men for everything that goes wrong in this world. Women are always the first to cry ‘sexism’, but never want to look at their own sexist behaviors. Coould you get any more sociopathic than that??
Samuel says
Im sorry but getting so many responses you are overwhelmed is way way way waaaaay waaaaay wwwaaaaaayyyyy better than never having any ever, even if 99% of your messages are sleezy ones you dont like(though im not willing to belive all women dont like it because it must work sometimmes otr they wouldnt do it) thats still like 2 messages a day from good guys, i cannot feel sympathy for women on this front when men are so desperate for anyone to reply to a message ever, its just not true that its equally difficult.
Steve says
The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is that if you are an ugly guy like me, you have zero chance of succeeding with online dating. Maybe OLD sites need to have some sort of facial recognition system that analyzes photos and determines whether the guy submitting the photo is attractive enough to date, and if not, sends a message saying, “Scram! Your kind isn’t wanted here.”
After all, wouldn’t that be more honest and truthful than just taking money from poor suckers like that who have no chance anyway? I mean, we can’t have women who think they’re too good for 99.9% of the men out there having their precious egos damaged by an ugly man who dares to approach them, now can we? The OLD sites are filled with such women.
After all, only men who fit into the top 20% of the population are worthy, right? And everyone else is undeserving? No matter that the women who think this way are 3’s, 4’s and 5’s in the looks department but think they’re entitled princesses who can demand the moon, stars and everything else in between. Because they’re worth it, doncha know.
And if a guy complains about his poor luck, he’s told to man up, buy expensive clothes, get plastic surgery, work on himself, blah, blah, blah because his poor luck is all his fault, right? What a way to tell a guy he’s not good enough just as he is, he has to forever work on becoming a better package, even if doing so gets him nowhere. All this is is simply a way for women to continue enforcing their stratospheric standards and ratcheting them up still further. Women don’t have to measure up, but by golly, the men sure do because they have to be perfect human beings.
And women can never be held accountable for their bad behavior on OLD sites because they’re sacrosanct and perfect people, isn’t that right, too?
Henriette says
Um, Steve? D’you think online dating is easy for an ugly woman? D’you imagine that kind, interesting men are bombarding her with messages?
“Women don’t have to measure up.” Are you joking?
I would change your assertion to, “Dating (not just of the online variety) is generally more difficult for ugly people (of both sexes) than it is for the beautiful.” However, please look around you. You will see all sorts of individuals, including many who are extremely homely, in couples. Moreover, there is no correlation between looks and happiness once wed (except that really hot guys tend to be a bit less happy), so ugly people can be just as joyously paired off as gorgeous ones.
It sounds as though you’ve gone through a rough patch and I’m sorry for that. But please stop imagining that everyone else has it easy.
anon says
Guys, look at it this way. . . online dating isn’t “the real world”! I’m a decent average looking guy and have no problem talking to and getting women to interact with me in “the real world”, but online is altogether different.
My advice is to get off of these sites unless you are above average in every way and even then would not recommend it. These sites will do more harm to your self-confidence than anything else.
The women who use these sites will never be satisfied because they feel mr. right is right around the corner and could be in her message box today…tomorrow….next week etc etc. There is really no incentive for them to find someone because 99% of them are addicted to all the attention they get, plus they get to reject people daily which also satisfies their need for control/power.
Do not feed them…Period!
melanie says
Thank you for nailing this one perfectly. If you had stayed on a little longer, you would have gotten to start the vetting process with the very few guys who seemed okay. At this point, approximately 75% of the men who I have communicated with and agreed to meet for a date turn out to be liars or stalkers.
On the bright side, I am grateful that I actually do get a fair amount of contacts. I also have two sons in their early twenties who have to deal with rejection and women who want an instant relationship so we all have our struggles!
lots of love and luck to everyone. I believe it’s like everything else, faith and determination!
Rapscalion says
The cold shallow world of internet dating, where people hang in the butcher shop window trying to look their so called best. Lol dont bother the only people on dating sites are narcissistic creeps and bitches who think they are in their favourite television program ( think i just discribed 99% of westernized people) lol its simple, most of you need to improve youre moral standard male or female you are both pretty horrible people when it comes to dating, the problem is with how most of you were brought up, unable to accept reality and substitute your own, unable to accept responsibility and blame it on somthing or somone else. At the end of the day most of you have only yourself to blame. You can try and improve yourselves by taking the first step…accepting responsibility for your behavior and actions, then everything alse will fall into place.
K E says
Reading all this makes me so glad I do not even have the inclination to ever date !! FT working single dad , so my situation takes up my time energy & cash. No wonder so many women utterly despise men , the way far too many men behave….they are feeding the ” media ” & man hating feminist propaganda machine , men get bashed enough as it is !! Are women & men even that compatible , the genders are poles apart & have so many conflicting & opposite wants & needs.
Karen Smith says
I talked on the phone and through texts for 9 months and we finally got together. He called two days later and said, “Your vagina is too loose.” Nice.
Evan Marc Katz says
You spent 9 months on a man you never met. That was your first mistake.
Jon says
Dating sites are full of narcissistic women who are just on there for the attention. I’ve called out countless women on these dating sites and asked them a few simple questions that would prove my point, but as always they refuse to answer. Seriously ladies, do you really need the attention that bad. I also believe they are just chatting to men, no matter where they are from as long as the guy tells them what they want to hear. They purposely might even talk to men who they know are too far away to really date. But getting back to my point, the majority of profiles are put up for no other purpose than to fool around… online that is 😉
N. Buck says
Dude, WHAT?!?! You’re telling me that EVERY SINGLE GUY who does online dating is some sort of perverted idiot? Is that what I’m doing wrong?
I can’t tell you how many amazingly long profiles I have completely read through, how many well crafted messages I have sent, or how many times I didn’t let the conversation go to anything sexual! Also, I can’t tell you that this tactic has worked well for me because I HAVE NOT GONE ON ANY DATES! And if I actually get to have a conversation, it usually lasts about 3 messages.
You mean to tell me that ALL WOMEN who do online dating are NOT superficial? They will make contact and continue conversation with an average looking guy who has a great personality? Really? I mean…REALLY?!?! There are no women who swipe based solely on looks and money? None at all? Really?
How about this: Survey 25 women. Watch their online dating habits. See what they do when an average looking guy crafts a great message. Could be enlightening…
Rebecca says
It’s not just the dating sites. Last summer I loosened my friend settings on Facebook and got bombarded with guys who were under the impression Messenger was either a dating app or thought it was a porn site. I once had two guys trying to initiate a chat at the same time. And don’t get me started on the dick picks (I once had one guy try to send me a video of himself cranking and yanking) the request for nude pictures and the one one guy who kept trying to Skype despite me continuing to hang up on him. It got so bad that now I’ve changed the settings back and no longer accept friend requests from guys I don’t know.
Alotofguys says
I could list the reasons, but I’m sure someone has already.
My situation is that I have a choice between online dating and not dating. (Location)
After trying online dating for a few weeks I chose the latter, that was over a decade ago.
This is from a tall, liberal, good looking, educated man who works out daily. Online dating is so bad for men many guys give up on all women. The fact that women lack even the tiny bit of empathy to understand this is sad.
So, I’ll just leave it at that, I would rather be alone the rest if my life then even try online dating again.
AGK says
Every lady friend I have has told me horror stories of the weird men they’ve met/encountered online. It is universal. As someone who prides himself on good internet decorum and is on the apps seriously and genuinely looking for something real, though, it can still be difficult and hard to empathize at times.
I’m sure what makes it frustrating is many men who appear normal at first are the ones who send creepy messages (otherwise, how would there even be a chance if someone is being selective in who she matches with?). But, for men who are normal, who write good bios, who do message thoughtful, engaging, considerate messages, who know how to appropriately flirt, who set up dates at X time and Y place and take the initiative—it’s still an incredibly frustrating experience. The amount of message drop offs, date flakes, and lackluster engagement can make for a tough shell to break when it comes to empathizing for the other side.
I don’t have solutions to any of these problems, either. I’m just a person who’s spent a long time (too long?) doing all the “right” things and still be confused and frustrated with the outcome. I can hear it and see it in the faces of my friends and acquaintances too: online dating feels more and more like a lottery for only the very lucky few.